Just bought an $800,000 house on a $186,000 salary and now I'm panicking....
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Anonymous
Have you priced summer camps? College? Activities? There is always another expense coming up. Maybe OP will never need to buy a car and doesn't need furniture for this new house and doesn't want to go on vacation or out to eat, lives to thrift shop, and has a massive rainy day/surprise home repair fund. But this is closer to the edge than a lot of us are comfortable. What's done is done, but OP and spouse need to do some serious budgeting, stat. |
Anonymous
Your take home is 11k out of 15.5k? That seems crazy high. That’s over 70%!! |
Anonymous
| We did that for years, almost the exact same numbers. It was fine. Never felt a pinch. The salary increased steadily over time and with each passing year it was a smaller percentage of income and the value of the house kept increasing. Value has more than doubled and the mortgage is now about 9% of gross, even after taking out equity during a refi for renovations. |
Anonymous
| OP, you will be fine. If you are even halfway good at budgeting, don't eat out a ton, don't have designer tastes, you will be fine. $7k a month is more than enough to live on and is more than the US median household income (gross, not net). |
Anonymous
OP again - yes, income is after 401k contributions (we each contribute 5%, and get a 5% match), and DW is a fed who will qualify for a pension. We are done with paid child care, kids are in public school, and will attend in-state public college. |
Anonymous
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529 expenses? If not daycare? You should have moved the unspent money from daycare into an education plan.
You are what advisors call "house poor" |
Anonymous
| what will you be contributing to retirement each month, how old are you, and how much do you have saved for retirement now? |
Anonymous
+1. This. If you can live on $7.3K per month you're all set. Hopefully the house you bought is in reasonably good condition and will not need extensive repairs. |
Anonymous
This is how you can live in a 200k house. It’s not the 2 income trap  It’s that there is actually housing stock that only cost 200k. Around here 200k gets you a non-updated 2 BR/1BA condo with HOA fee way outside the beltway. Maybe not even in a good school district. You’re not better with money, you just live somewhere cheaper. Also, you will probably never see the home appreciation we have around here. My house has gone up more than your entire annual income (125k) in less than 2 years. There are trade offs either place. I’m not knocking your choices. But it’s not like people are spending more on housing here because we fell into some sort of keeping up with the Joneses crap.
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Anonymous
It seems like you are saving far too little for retirement (I know you didn’t ask for advice about that, but I would much rather max 401ks and live in a less expensive house for the money you’re putting out). Assuming you are under the newer system I can’t imagine your DW’s pension is substantial. But, what’s done is done and you’ll find a way to make it work. |
Anonymous
Just make sure you use very secure birth control, if not double birth control. It sounds silly but I have so many patients have an unexpected late pregnancy. Another kid would crash your plan. --ob/gyn |
Anonymous
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This makes me panic. There is now way after taxes and retirement savings you still have 70% of your take home. You should not count on the pension or kids going to in state college. There are all unknowns until she actually retires and college is next year.
You must have posted here because you know this wasn’t a good move. Done deal? |
Anonymous
That's so cute |
Anonymous
Agree it seems high. We make 60K + more and that's our take home |
Anonymous
do they know this? |