Toggle navigation
Toggle navigation
Home
DCUM Forums
Nanny Forums
Events
About DCUM
Advertising
Search
Recent Topics
Hottest Topics
FAQs and Guidelines
Privacy Policy
Your current identity is: Anonymous
Login
Preview
Subject:
Forum Index
»
Money and Finances
Reply to "How much mortgage can we afford?"
Subject:
Emoticons
More smilies
Text Color:
Default
Dark Red
Red
Orange
Brown
Yellow
Green
Olive
Cyan
Blue
Dark Blue
Violet
White
Black
Font:
Very Small
Small
Normal
Big
Giant
Close Marks
[quote=Anonymous]OP - You need to create a budget and track every penny for a few months. I personally like YNAB.com, but there are many online apps out there. They import your income and track every credit card charge, utility payment, etc. and you can categorize them into various buckets such gas, electric, misc, eating out, alcohol, student loan, car loan, etc. It's amazing how much of a budget can be eaten up by the little things, a trip to CVS for shampoo, ordering in instead of cooking because you are exhausted, bring a bottle of wine to a friend's house, etc. Once you have 3-4 months of expenses you can see how much you have left over each month. That amount (minus some percentage to be prudent) will be what you can afford for PITI. Then work backwards to figure out what loan you can afford. Although there are different schools of thought on this, I would start some college savings in a 529 if you can. If you invest in the plan in your state you will usually get a small tax break. I'd also pay a little more than the minimum on your highest interest debt each month. I think most would agree here that your debt isn't "good" debt, meaning you aren't using it as leverage to make additional money. So you should try to get rid of it as soon as possible. I know that seems daunting given where you are in life, but even a few extra payments a year make a huge difference. [/quote]
Options
Disable HTML in this message
Disable BB Code in this message
Disable smilies in this message
Review message
Search
Recent Topics
Hottest Topics