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What is you Mortgage Payment and Gross Salary?
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Anonymous
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I feel like our houshold is doing well and we are really blessed to live a comfortable life. However, for the LIFE of me I cannot understand how people afford the homes and cars in which they drive around here. I'm often driving around and wondering, "what do all these people do and how do they afford to live like this?!" We live in a very modest house (by far the smallest of anyone we know) and drive old cars. Here is what we look like:
-190K gross household income -$2,400 mortgage payment -1 car 12 yrs old and paid off. Another car 4yrs old, almost paid off, but paying $350/mo until next spring -1 child in a home based daycare at just over $800/mo How does everyone manage live around here?! With the above obligations, I feel like we are comfortable, certainly not living in luxury, but we can save for college, retirement, and a rainy day. Do people living in these nice homes driving nice new cars have huge incomes? If we were to upgrade our house and have say, a 4K mortgage, we would have to AT least be bringing in 100K more anually. And anyways, what is a 4K mortgage? About a 550K loan (which of course does not get you the Taj Mahal here in the greater DC area!). |
Anonymous
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$65K
$1,931 mortgage, small old house in PG county. I drive a crappy little used car (when I drive it), and my kid is now in public school. No cable, no new clothes, no vacations that involve going anywhere other than visiting family or friends. We do OK and manage to have a good time. |
Anonymous
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We are:
$250K gross $3600 mortgage $700 student loans $1400 child care (total for two kids) Cars are paid off We have lots of other bills--utilities, grocery, misc., etc. We manage to max out retirement savings (401K and IRA) and college funds, but are not saving much of anything beyond that. We don't take big vacations, or buy designer anything. But I also don't watch every penny I spent at the grocery store or on stuff for the kids. |
Anonymous
| We're in a similar boat as you, OP. Slightly higher salary (50K more), same mortgage, pay more for preschool ($500/month more), but #2 on the way, and wondering how people do it with 4K mortgages and 2 in daycare/preschool. DH believes that people are just in massive debt. Who knows? |
Anonymous
| Sames as you OP - less salary (150K), higher mortgage (2,600). One car payment ($450) and one clunker. We are comfortable. Obviosuly wish for more, but not struggling. |
Anonymous
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250K
4,400 mortgage No car payments (2 paid off cars) 1,068 a month childcare We save about 2K a month no problem and take vacations and fully fund 401Ks. |
Anonymous
| 65K lady here again. PP, I think your dh is probably right about lots of folks around here having a lot of debt. I still manage to put away for college and retirement on my salary (which floors me a little), but things would probably be a lot more cushy if I were willing to just keep building the debt up. |
Anonymous
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have you ever considered some people are in debt up to their ears? That their extravagant lifestyles are more important than their savings? Or that their materialism is only good here on earth?
Sounds like you appreciate what you have OP so enjoy your blessings and don't waste your worries on trivial stuff |
Anonymous
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Some people are in massive debt. Others are receiving financial help from parents and in-laws. Others saved and invested and bought starter homes early and eventually traded up thanks to equity and the strong housing market a couple years ago.
We make a little over $100k and live in a $600k home with a mortgage just under $2000k/month. We carry no credit card debt. Our cars are paid off (they weren't fancy to begin with and they're old, but reliable). No childcare expenses thanks to Grandma. Paid off our student loans which weren't too terrible to begin with b/c we went to state schools and didn't take out more than what we actually needed. Don't regularly frequent Starbucks or have routine manis-pedis. We take nice vacations (Caribbean, Disney, etc.) that we plan and save for a year or so in advance. We make lists of things we really need before heading into the mall, Target, etc. and try not to impulse buy. We go to the library instead of Barnes & Noble. We mow our own lawn and clean our own house. Haven't been to a movie theater since February of 2003, but I am told that I haven't missed much 
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Anonymous
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gross income: $85k
Mortgage: $1430 Student loans: $435 DC's therapies: $800 out of pocket/month It's tight for us. Having a special needs child is expensive. |
Anonymous
OP here. I'm really not worried about it, I'm mainly just curious. I just really wonder how everyone affords it. For instance, I have a girlfriend who always says the same thing "how does everyone afford to live to well??!" However I had never been to her house. I go there for a playdate and she lives in an ENORMOUS house with a 3car garage, an amazing kitchen, on acres of property, and her kids go to montessori school (and BTW, she is a SAHM). So all this time she's saying to me "how do these people live" and IMO she is one of "these people" I always wonder about!!! Don't get me wrong, I DO appreciate that we have been so lucky. Heck, I don't even have a college degree and I make the same as my highly educated husband, so I KNOW how blessed we are. As far as people being in debt...I don't know, maybe they are, maybe they just have huge incomes. Obviously with the housing crisis and the forclosure rates, apparantly many people are stretched too thin. |
Anonymous
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$400K gross
$5100 mortgage $900/month on a nannyshare No car payments or student loans. Basic cable, basic cell phones, no long distance service in the house (we use our cell phones), we go to NC to the beach for our vacations (but that's more a function of having little kids than budget). We're pretty frugal and most of my non-work clothes are from the Gap. Did just splurge on a $250 Tory Burch purse though. We save the max in our 401Ks and usually save a little more than that (although not this year b/c we just moved). |
Anonymous
| PP here. A lot of people made a TON of money on prior homes. We thought we got into the home-buying game late and still cleared $240K on our old house, which allowed us to put all that money down on our new house. |
Anonymous
OP here, yes, I know this. We had a rental property that we cleared 220K on. However we already were living in our current home when we sold the investment (did not have to pay capital gains b/c we lived in it originally 3yrs before the sale). We just took the profits and socked it away in low risk investment funds. I guess taking that into consideration, we could have upgraded and could be living in a huge house as well that people like myself might wonder about. I guess for us, we figured unless some rich uncle died and left us money, there is no way we would ever have a chunk of change that big, so we decided to save it. In hindsight, I'm very happy for that decision not to reinvest it in the a new house since the real estate market has taken a massive dump. |
Anonymous
So, so smart what you did with that money. |