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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Pondering buying a single family house. We currently own a town house. Early 30's, 2 kids, wife stays home. I make 250k in tech.

Current PITI/HOA is $2200 combined with a mid 2% rate.

Our assets:

Town house equity is roughly 230k.
450k in retirement accounts
45k in an HSA
390k in brokerage (not much in gains, most of this I recently put in from an inheritance, so minimal tax from selling)
25k in cash

We don't need to buy a bigger house right now but in 5 years I think we'll wish we did, when our kids are older. Given that tech is unstable with layoffs I'm hesitant to make a big purchase and wipe out our savings but I'm also afraid of being priced out of larger houses in the future if we wait. The houses we would aim for are around $1M.[/quote]

I think your mistake here is making a giant financial decision based on a flimsy prediction of the future - that you will need a bigger house and that you will be “priced out.” Both of those assumptions are really, really poor ways to make the biggest financial decision of your life, a home purchase.

You probably need to meet with a financial planner to better understand your financial situation and set out some goals. For example - the decision is going to look completely different based on whether your wife wants to go back to work, your college aspirations for your kids, your willingness to move further away from your job and commute further and the impact on your QOL of a long commute, and your preferences on public school zones. Most of the people around here who take on a big leap in housing costs at your stage of life do it specifically because they want to access a school pyramid their kids will attend from ES-HS.

With the financial planner you can also map about the impact of different spending and investment choices. For example maybe putting more money into real estate vs the stock market makes sense for you overall. But you need to know exactly the risks and benefits of that choice.

At the end of the day, I find it really hard to justify doubling your fixed costs when you don’t have to. [/quote]

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