crash course on municipal bonds?

[Anonymous]

We have several million in munis for tax free income purposes in a high-income tax state.

As a retail investor, one pays a premium on top of the face value. That premium changes based on demand. At some points they are worth more than what we paid, and at other times they are worth less--depending on the market. But we are guaranteed (with a low probability of default) the face value back at maturation or if it is called. Right now they have gone down over all, but popped back up this past week.

We started in a managed municipal bond account with a large investment firm. We have separate brokerage accounts with the same firm and an advisor. We paid .4 for the managed bond account, but we also had to keep buying new bonds in order to stay there. And we didn't want to buy more. So our advisor moved them over into a separate brokerage account that doesn't cost us anything, but is not managed. But really, the bond people just wanted to buy more bonds. Did not seem worth it at all.

We get a bondview .com report on our bonds if anything changes on ratings. (I think they do X number for free.) I know that revenue bonds are better than general obligation bonds. Also, when looking at bonds something to look for is if the state is required to balance its budget. Our state, by state law, is required to balance the budget so it is less likely to default.

[Anonymous]

^^I will add, we wouldn't have done munis if we hadn't wanted the income. We have since changed our portfolio considerably.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where do you live? For state tax purposes, it can matter a lot. A unique (and little known) benefit of living in D.C. is that it exempts ALL muni bond distributions from tax, no matter what state they're from. That means you aren't stuck either with state specific (e.g., Virginia or Maryland) bond funds that aren't diversified enough or with index funds that will not be fully tax deductible.

Yeah, but the downside is that then you have to live in DC.

m

Finally, something good about living here! Ill look into a bond fund. We also have schwab.

[Anonymous]

Schwab purchased Wasmer Schroeder, a muni bond firm based in Florida. It has been a while since I looked at this but I seem to recall Wasmer Schroeder charges 0.35% of its account value as its annual fee. The minimum at W.S is/was $250k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No reason to buy municapl bonds if you have enough room in tax advantaged accounts for regular bonds.

+1

This is almost certainly the right answer for the vast majority of people with less than $10m.