Anonymous wrote:OP Here. sorry for the delay - running children around.
We have two kids in public schools and have typical UMC activities and expenses - nothing to write home about. I'm glad I'm getting alot of "That's crazy"s because I also think it's a bit crazy to buy a house whose price is 6X HHI.
We take home just under 16K a month after 401K, HSA, 529s, so after
$3.5K PITI
$1K utilities
$6K credit cards (everything including groceries goes on cards),
We have like 6K left over each month. We've saved quite a bit over the last couple of years, but the money just goes into a savings account (we don't put non-retirement money in stocks). So what to do with that money? Buy a townhouse/condo and rent it out? Or increase PITI to $9K and "invest" in our primary house?
To those asking that we just move to a less expensive house (or one that's farther away) - we've already decided where we want to live (based on schools /neighborhood /commute), so our question for DCUM is not "where can I find a 4000sqft house on my budget" but rather "I think I can afford $9K PITI - should I?"
Thanks for the responses.
If I understand your budget and income flow correctly, if you take on a $9k PITI then you wouldn't have any non-retirement savings each month, right? So every time you have a large one-off expense (annual vacations, new car, house repair/renovation), you would be drawing upon your existing savings rather than being able to save up for it. This doesn't seem sustainable?
Do you have a lot of equity in your current house? Can you make a higher down payment so your PITI is lower?