People use leverage all of the time for home loans, and it is not unheard of to use a 80% loan to value ratio for a mortgage. For a $500k home, you might put up $100k cash and take a $400k loan. You would likely do this at a reasonable interest rate, and your hope is the value of the home goes up faster than your interest charges. Your home value could fall, leaving you with a mortgage that is underwater, i.e. you owe more than the home is actually worth. All of this can apply to investing as well. Using a 30% LTV for investing seems perfectly reasonable to me.
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Forum threads:
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- [Lifecycle Investing - Leveraging when young](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=274390)
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Books:
- [Lifecycle Investing: A New, Safe, and Audacious Way to Improve the Performance of Your Retirement Portfolio](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003N44KOM/)
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Forum threads:
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- [Lifecycle Investing - Leveraging when young](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=274390)
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### Margin loan
When you have stocks, brokers will let you take a margin loan of at least 50% or more of your equity value. This gives you at least 1.5 leverage, at the cost of margin loan interest, which is usually terrible at most brokerages. For example, Schwab will charge you 13% interest as of today (June 2025). If you cannot make more than 13% on the investments you do with leverage, you won't even break even. Interactive Brokers will give you a much better rate, for example 5%. This is an easier number to beat on investment return.
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Forum threads:
- [How do rolling and margin on futures trading work?](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=300111)
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- [Trading Futures, Should I Use All Cash Balance to Buy a Money Market Fund?](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=201254)
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- [How can I invest my maintenance margin (for futures)?](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=393827)