OP here, thanks everyone for your VERY thoughtful comments. I truly appreciate it. To the PP, I am glad you paid so little for your house. I must admit, I do not understand the point of your comment though because it's not very useful nor applicable to my question. Thanks for the response anyway. |
| 200k HHI here, 30yr mortgage of 500k. Could have gotten higher mortgage $$$ or 15yr, but bought on the basis of if the highest earner lost his/her job, we should be able to make it through, granted no savings, would have to take DS out of daycare, but least we would not get into a liquidity squeeze or have to dip into existing savings. |
| I have slightly more than that on 200K, but have no childcare expenses or loans. I do fine - I can't do as many extras as I'd like, but can do some, and I could swing a $500/month car payment or HELOC if I need to without much concern. |
| HHI is $350K and our mortgage is around $600K. We wouldn't have any problems swinging this except for that we're doing private school. Like you, we bought into a great school district planning on sending our kids to public, but we ended up being unimpressed by the "great" public school and opted for private instead. |
OP here, this is where I find myself nervous at times. The prospect of me overplanning, which leads me to pay a premium for a school location only to be confronted with private schools due to some unforeseen issues. Thanks for responding PP. I think this may be the reality check I was looking for. |
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$250k single income. $520k mortgage paid for easily. We save significantly and vacation well.
No hold are costs aside from morning preschool for child #3. Other 2 are in public school. |
| About 150k |
| We have about half that mortgage on a $125,000 HHI...so I'd say at least $250,000 HHI |
| 150k if no/few other debts. |
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I'm a SAHM, so we have no childcare costs, per se, but I want to caution you against thinking your costs will go down substantially as your kids age out of daycare/full-time nannies.
We were thrilled to make our last preschool payment last January. Now our 8 year old needs orthodontic work prior to getting braces (hello, $10K). I was surprised to see how much summer camps (day camp) cost. We only do a few weeks of camp for $$ reasons. But I have friends who work full time who use summer camp for childcare, and they spend over $10K/summer for 3 kids. You may very well be able to afford the house, just don't underestimate how much money kids cost at older ages. |
| We have a $800k mortgage on a HHI of $500k. We pay our $4700 mortgage easily on our HHI with plenty of money left over for childcare for our 2 children, vacations, savings, etc. |
With you HHI, you should be able to pay off your mortgage in two years. Not many people lucky people like you in this forum to have this kind of HHI. |
You must be bad at math and live in Detroit with your col to get that formula for paying off the mortgage in 2 years. |
| I was told by my financial planner that you should budget a mortgage about three time your annual income, so a $600k mortgage is pretty doable on a $200K+ annual income. In that situation, mortgage/taxes should be about $4K per month and the monthly post tax take home would be about 10K. Do your own math with your specific income, and you can decide for yourself if that is doable with childcare/insurance/debt/etc. |
You must have very high IQ to make this kind of HHI. However, you can not take a joke. |