| Does he need your income for the mortgage? Tell him you refuse to sign the documents, because it is more than you both can spend. If he earns all the money, he doesn't need you to sign. |
OP here. We can pay for the mortgage on his salary but that's not the point. It's what's about best for us, not him. We don't need a expensive and large house for 4 people. We can get a nice house smaller house and have more money to save for other things. |
What do you want to save for? With your HHI, I don’t understand why you can’t accomplish the financial goals you’ve outlined and easily buy the house. It sounds like you’re obsessed with saving and being frugal for the sake of it. Your husband wanted to save to buy a house. Honestly, I would be pissed if my spouse tried to force us to live miserly forever because of a never ending need to squirrel away more money. Are ever okay with spending money? |
We save for the sake of having a savings account and an emergency fund. We started saving for a down payment on a house and childcare. I took 4 month off of maternity leave and will be doing the same if we have a second child. The first 6 weeks was paid for and the rest was unpaid. We started saving for college. I am tight with money because I know what it's like to grow up without money. I grew up middle class but my parents were poor when I was young, and we even experienced homelessness when I was 5/6. My mom remarried and I had a middle class upbringing, but even then couldn't afford that much with a large family. I want to give my children the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities, buy them a car, pay for their college, etc. I don't want them to put off college like I had to because I couldn't afford it. My husband grew up in an upper middle class family where he was afforded those things. He is more willing to spend money because he never had to go through those experiences I did. |
| Where are you looking? There are areas where $800K doesn’t get you a very nice house or where a $1.0M house gets you into a better school district. |
Not to him, it's not. |
OP here. We don't live in DC. |
New poster here. Are you and your DH on the same page about how much you plan to do for your children? Your DH could argue your kids don’t need fully funded private college and that going to school in a top school district and paid for state U is enough. Does your DH also want to save to completely pay for private college for two kids, expensive activities and buy cars for the kids and if so, how does he see the numbers/budget with the house in his price point? Either you guys don’t agree on how to spend disposable income so it comes to a head in how much house/mortgage you can afford or aren’t both working from the same numbers in how much it costs to do all the things you both agree you want to do. I think there is some compromise where you have a house that has more of what he wants but you aren’t living on the edge of foreclosure and your kids don’t have to put off college. That number may not be 1.2 but it could be more than 800K. I’ve known couples that have bought foreclosures, fixer uppers, or taken on longer commute to get more house. I’ve also seen lots of upper middle class families send their kids to state U for their state or OOS for the more affordable option and the child doesn’t have school loans and maybe maybe gets a car as part of that. |
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You can afford a 1M home plus private school and college tuition if your income remains at that level. |
| Interesting. My dad grew up poor. My mom did not. We literally had everything we wanted. Almost. Our house was nice - not grande. Country club but no European vacations. Private college only was my dad’s one rule. He’d say there was no way he’d busted his behind to get ahead (he was quite successful (law degree)) to send his kids to a public school - no matter how good. My sisters kids have all gone to public universities - he didn’t seem to care too much. The point is-sometimes when you grow up with less, you forego to give your kids everything! |
| Buy the best/most $$$ house you can afford on a 15-year mortgage. You can feel at ease knowing that your mortgage will be gone before college and you'll be paying it down efficiently. |
OP here. We can but I don't want to be stuck with a large mortgage if one of us loses our job. I make around $120k and my husband makes close to $300k. We can still be fine without my salary, but we will be in trouble if we lose his. I'd rather have a lower mortgage that we can afford on one salary. |
OP here. We are fine with public schools but we want private schools to be an option. We both agree that we want to pay for their college, have the option to do extracurricular activities, and have the option to buy them a car. |