Originally Posted by iahflyr

I'm in LA. Yes, houses are expensive, but it's more of an investment than a cost. As long as you can afford the mortgage payment, and your mortgage payment minus principal is somewhat comparable to what you might pay in rent, then you're good. I've generated far more wealth just owning my house in CA than I ever did in Texas.

For reference, I bought my house for 650k about 2 years ago (it's probably worth ~850k now).



I do. It seems like the GOP tax bill will unfortunately raise taxes on most pilots (Losing union dues deduction, losing per diem deduction, losing personal exemption deduction, higher rates for 150-200k single filers, and the 10k cap on the SALT deduction).

I will actually be ok. Right now I write-off about 11k in income tax and about 7k in property tax. I prepaid 3.5k of my property tax for next year, so I'm only losing a small amount of write off in 2018.

Likely CA will either switch some of its income tax to a payroll deduction (which is tax deductible by the employer), or allow you to get a 1:1 state tax break if you donate to state charity. There are several bills in the legislature to make this happen right now.

I also don't think the GOP stands a chance at holding the house in 2018, or the white house and senate in 2020. So I'm confident man of those deductions will come back.