Reply to Can we stop referring to households making $200 or 300K a year as "middle class"?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We went from 150k to 450k, the only thing that changed was a larger new house, our disposable income is the same.[/quote]

Sounds like a silly choice to me but YMMV[/quote]

Sounds ok to me, would it be better to buy a new car[/quote]

Assuming that they were spending some money on housing before, their housing expenses are now more than 1/2 their take home pay.   That seems like a very bad decision.

A good decision might be to increase the mortgage by a couple thousand a month, and use the rest for increased savings towards retirement, college etc . . . , and maybe treat oneself to something like a vacation once in a while.  That's very possible on $350K.  [/quote]

Yeah PP is either lying or majorly house poor.  I did some really rough calculations on those two incomes to see how take home pay might differ- granted actual taxes depend on many factors, this is just based on an online calculator tool for a married couple living in MD, doesn't include deductions for 401k, medical, etc.

$150k
- take home monthly pay: ~$9k
- max mortgage based on 30% rule: $2700
- income after mortgage: $6300

$350k
- take home monthly pay: ~18k
- so if their disposable income after mortgage is still $6300, that's a whopping $11700 mortgage, or perhaps less if she was factoring in the massive bills from heating/cooling such a big house.

Even if these numbers are off a bit, that is still nuts. Which is why I call BS.

[/quote]

When we are at 160K our mortgage was 3500, when we moved up to 350k our mortgage is now 5200. Dunno but we also had kids so childcare costs ate the difference. I can see how someone could feel like the only difference is the house size.[/quote]

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