bilalchughtai

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bilalchughtai 11 Oct 2024 13:49 UTC
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in reply to: jake_mendel’s comment on: jake_mendel’s Shortform
Tangentially relevant: this paper by Jacob Andreas’ lab shows you can get pretty far on some algorithmic tasks by just training a randomly initialized network’s embedding parameters. This is in some sense the opposite to experiment 2.

bilalchughtai 30 Jul 2024 9:18 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Zac Hatfield-Dodds’s comment on: bilalchughtai’s Shortform
I don’t think it’s great for post age-60 actually, as compared with a regular pension, see my reply. The comment on asset tests is useful though, thanks. Roughly LISA assets count towards many tests, while pensions don’t. More details here for those interested: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/lifetime-isas/

bilalchughtai 30 Jul 2024 9:13 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: bilalchughtai’s comment on: bilalchughtai’s Shortform
Couple more things I didn’t explain:
1. The LISA is a tax free investment account. There are no capital gains taxes on it. This is similar to the regular ISA (which you can put up to £20k in per year, doesn’t have a 25% bonus, and can be used for anything—the £4k LISA cap contributes to this £20k). I omitted this as I was implicitly viewing using this account as the counterfactual.
2. The LISA is often strictly worse than a workplace pension for saving for retirement, if you are employed. This is because you invest in a LISA post-(income)tax, while pension contributions are calculated pre-tax. Even if the bonus approximately makes up for tax you pay, employer contributions tip the balance towards the pension.

bilalchughtai 29 Jul 2024 18:57 UTC
3 points
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on: bilalchughtai’s Shortform
Should you invest in a Lifetime ISA? (UK)
The Lifetime Individual Savings Account (LISA) is a government saving scheme in the UK intended primarily to help individuals between the ages of 18 and 50 buy their first home (among a few other things). You can hold your money either as cash or in stocks and shares.
The unique selling point of the scheme is that the government will add a 25% bonus on all savings up to £4000 per year. However, this comes with several restrictions. The account is intended to only be used for the following purposes:
1) to buy your first home, worth £450k or less
2) if you are aged 60 or older
3) if you are terminally ill
The government do permit individuals to use the money for other purposes, with the caveat that a 25% cut will be taken before doing so. Seems like a no brainer? Not quite.
Suppose you invest $x$ in your LISA. The government bonus puts this up to $1.25 x$ . Suppose later you decide to withdraw your money for purposes other than (1-3). Then you end up with $0.75 \times 1.25 x = 0.9375 x$ . That’s a 6.25% loss!
So when does it make sense to use your LISA? Suppose further you have some uncertainty over whether you will use your money for (1-3). Most likely, you are worried that you might not buy a home in the UK, or you might want to buy a home over the price of £450k (because for instance you live in London, and £450k doesn’t stretch that far).
Let’s compute the expected value of your investment if the probability of using your money for the purposes (1-3) is $p$ (which likely means your probability of using it for 1 is also about $p$ ). Suppose we invest £ $x$ . For our investment to be worth it, we should expect at least £ $x$ back.
EV = $p$ (bonus scenario) + $(1 - p)$ (penalty scenario) = $p (1.25 x) + (1 - p) (0.75 \times 1.25 x) \geq x$ , implying $p \geq 0.2$ .
So, you should use your ISA if your probability of using it to buy a home (or 2,3) is above 20%. This is surprisingly low! Note further this calculation applies regardless of if you use a cash or stocks and shares LISA.
I havn’t ever seen this calculation written up publicly before so thought it was worth sharing.