How much mortgage at 400k HHI

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI ranges from 400-500k yearly. We bought a house that was 1.2M and put 20% down. We don’t feel remotely stretched and save a lot (even with two in daycare).

How much do you bring home and how much do you save?

Varies slightly every month because my husband (an academic) does a lot of consulting work but we usually bring home around 18k-21k a month, max both of our retirements, 1k to each 529, and save around another 3k to a post tax brokerage account. PITI is $5900 a month.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rule of thumb is to buy a house that is double your HHI. We bought ours for 300k (20 years ago) at 150K HHI. It gave us enormous amount of financial freedom and fantastic SOL.

You are completely out of touch with the DC area. There is absolutely nothing you can get for 300 or even 400 now. 500 gets you a super shitty shack in a good school district. I think most people would love to have the option of going just double HHI but it's just not feasible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rule of thumb is to buy a house that is double your HHI. We bought ours for 300k (20 years ago) at 150K HHI. It gave us enormous amount of financial freedom and fantastic SOL.

You are completely out of touch with the DC area. There is absolutely nothing you can get for 300 or even 400 now. 500 gets you a super shitty shack in a good school district. I think most people would love to have the option of going just double HHI but it's just not feasible.

Honestly $500k only gets you a shack in a good school district if you are farther out. It's $600k for a shack closer in.

[Anonymous]

At that income your take home should be 18k even after you max out retirement. 900k mortgage, 5300 PITI, it's fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Houses under 1.5m suffer from either location, schools or it's old

Yeah, those $1.4 million homes are just downright awful...

[Anonymous]

We are about 19k monthly hhi and have a 5100$ mortgage that we overpay. Also have two kids in daycare for 3k/ month but no other loans. We max out retirement and contribute to other investments including 529.

I know everyone on here likes to talk about how frugal they are but you also dont want to under buy then feel pressure to move if your family grows or the house starts feeling too small.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are about 19k monthly hhi and have a 5100$ mortgage that we overpay. Also have two kids in daycare for 3k/ month but no other loans. We max out retirement and contribute to other investments including 529.

I know everyone on here likes to talk about how frugal they are but you also dont want to under buy then feel pressure to move if your family grows or the house starts feeling too small.

I can only speak to myself at that income level, but we definitely did not under buy. We just put a good amount down, so we are not stuck with a fixed high expense and never shackled to being a 2 income house out of necessity.

That's the great advantage of being high income, you dont have to back yourself into a corner.