HHI: $850k before bonuses or carried interest
PITI: ~ $6000
Three kids in private.
Helping out in laws.
We have plenty saved but we're not liquid, and we run our checking account down to almost zero every month. It is quite stressful for me, the lower earner. In a perfect world I'd sell our home and an investment home and buy something more modest with the cash and have no mortgage, but spouse would never go for that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in HCOL area and have decided to prioritize location/schools and our monthly mortgage is a lot higher than we'd prefer.

Ages: 39, 36
Kids: 5, 3
PITI: $6k
HHI: $475k
Retirement savings: $1.75 million

Our financial advisor tells us we're doing fine but I hate seeing that mortgage payment going out every month. I tell myself it's forced savings...

Curious to see stats for others in our situation.

How are your retirement savings 1.75m at your age and given the market conditions of the past year? Are you referring only to 401ks, or to multiple brokerage accounts?

Probably family money or family gave them down payment for house. Such a typical DCUM post. “I have a trust fund and my wife’s parents gave us $500K when we got married. We feel poor because we live above our means, but we can do this because of my trust fund and my in-laws. These are my stats (omits context). What are yours?”

+1. This is everyone on money/finance on DCUM. I'd love for there to be a separate thread for the "we got gifts from parents" folks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is the same and our PITI is $3,900. This is very comfortable for us. I would not be comfortable with $6k even though we could technically ‘afford it’. I like going on nice vacations and saving for retirement and 529s too much.

+1, except our HHI is $650K. Would def not feel comfortable at $6K.

Why? What on earth are you spending $20k a month on??

529s, retirement, kid activities, gardener/semi-monthly cleaning... I don't know - it seems to add up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is the same and our PITI is $3,900. This is very comfortable for us. I would not be comfortable with $6k even though we could technically ‘afford it’. I like going on nice vacations and saving for retirement and 529s too much.

Which exurb do you live in

Some of us bought 15+ years ago...

Anonymous wrote:Age: 43 and 42
HHI: $900K
PITI: $4500 (3.5% interest rate)
Three kids all in Public
No debt except mortgage

You win! You’ll die with the most money.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is the same and our PITI is $3,900. This is very comfortable for us. I would not be comfortable with $6k even though we could technically ‘afford it’. I like going on nice vacations and saving for retirement and 529s too much.

+1, except our HHI is $650K. Would def not feel comfortable at $6K.

Why? What on earth are you spending $20k a month on??

Age: 43 and 42
HHI: $900K
PITI: $4500 (3.5% interest rate)
Three kids all in Public
No debt except mortgage

I’m the PP asking about retirement savings in the other post, but we are a couple of years younger than you are our HHI is similar to yours. we have a 4K PITI. This gives us breathing room in other areas, like maxing out retirement, childcare, home maintenance, one to two nice but not extravagant vacations annually, and likely private school for 2 kids. 6k would be doable but would come at the expense of other things - in our HCOL area, we’d either have to have a higher PITI to live in a better school district, or a more affordable PITI and private school.

We are fortunate that grandparents are covering college for our kids so we do not need to fund 529s.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in HCOL area and have decided to prioritize location/schools and our monthly mortgage is a lot higher than we'd prefer.

Ages: 39, 36
Kids: 5, 3
PITI: $6k
HHI: $475k
Retirement savings: $1.75 million

Our financial advisor tells us we're doing fine but I hate seeing that mortgage payment going out every month. I tell myself it's forced savings...

Curious to see stats for others in our situation.

How are your retirement savings 1.75m at your age and given the market conditions of the past year? Are you referring only to 401ks, or to multiple brokerage accounts?

Probably family money or family gave them down payment for house. Such a typical DCUM post. “I have a trust fund and my wife’s parents gave us $500K when we got married. We feel poor because we live above our means, but we can do this because of my trust fund and my in-laws. These are my stats (omits context). What are yours?”

Right, so they are presumably including all their savings in “retirement” then. Even if they both averaged 35k in their 401s through 17 years of work (and I think this is generous- assuming they both maxed out, got generous employee matching, and got decent returns in the market in an average target date fund), theyd still be at under 1.1 million BEFORE you apply a haircut from recent market losses. It doesn’t add up that these are retirement numbers. To your point op must be including home equity or other brokerage/savings.

To be fair, one or both could have employers that permit an in-plan mega backdoor Roth, so they could have been superfunding over the years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in HCOL area and have decided to prioritize location/schools and our monthly mortgage is a lot higher than we'd prefer.

Ages: 39, 36
Kids: 5, 3
PITI: $6k
HHI: $475k
Retirement savings: $1.75 million

Our financial advisor tells us we're doing fine but I hate seeing that mortgage payment going out every month. I tell myself it's forced savings...

Curious to see stats for others in our situation.

How are your retirement savings 1.75m at your age and given the market conditions of the past year? Are you referring only to 401ks, or to multiple brokerage accounts?

Probably family money or family gave them down payment for house. Such a typical DCUM post. “I have a trust fund and my wife’s parents gave us $500K when we got married. We feel poor because we live above our means, but we can do this because of my trust fund and my in-laws. These are my stats (omits context). What are yours?”

Right, so they are presumably including all their savings in “retirement” then. Even if they both averaged 35k in their 401s through 17 years of work (and I think this is generous- assuming they both maxed out, got generous employee matching, and got decent returns in the market in an average target date fund), theyd still be at under 1.1 million BEFORE you apply a haircut from recent market losses. It doesn’t add up that these are retirement numbers. To your point op must be including home equity or other brokerage/savings.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in HCOL area and have decided to prioritize location/schools and our monthly mortgage is a lot higher than we'd prefer.

Ages: 39, 36
Kids: 5, 3
PITI: $6k
HHI: $475k
Retirement savings: $1.75 million

Our financial advisor tells us we're doing fine but I hate seeing that mortgage payment going out every month. I tell myself it's forced savings...

Curious to see stats for others in our situation.

How are your retirement savings 1.75m at your age and given the market conditions of the past year? Are you referring only to 401ks, or to multiple brokerage accounts?

Probably family money or family gave them down payment for house. Such a typical DCUM post. “I have a trust fund and my wife’s parents gave us $500K when we got married. We feel poor because we live above our means, but we can do this because of my trust fund and my in-laws. These are my stats (omits context). What are yours?”

I say this because we are similar ages and our HHI is higher than yours are our PITI is lower. It doesn’t seem feasible to pay for childcare, have that PITI, fully fund 529s (my guess), and have $1.75M in investments (likely more if that’s where you are at now and market conditions are what they are). Also, if you are willing to take on that PITI on your income my guess is you live above your means in other areas of your life. The only way you can do all this is through family money or by having an equity event and being in a single earner household where the other spouse does the childcare.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in HCOL area and have decided to prioritize location/schools and our monthly mortgage is a lot higher than we'd prefer.

Ages: 39, 36
Kids: 5, 3
PITI: $6k
HHI: $475k
Retirement savings: $1.75 million

Our financial advisor tells us we're doing fine but I hate seeing that mortgage payment going out every month. I tell myself it's forced savings...

Curious to see stats for others in our situation.

How are your retirement savings 1.75m at your age and given the market conditions of the past year? Are you referring only to 401ks, or to multiple brokerage accounts?

Probably family money or family gave them down payment for house. Such a typical DCUM post. “I have a trust fund and my wife’s parents gave us $500K when we got married. We feel poor because we live above our means, but we can do this because of my trust fund and my in-laws. These are my stats (omits context). What are yours?”

Anonymous wrote:Our HHI is the same and our PITI is $3,900. This is very comfortable for us. I would not be comfortable with $6k even though we could technically ‘afford it’. I like going on nice vacations and saving for retirement and 529s too much.

+1, except our HHI is $650K. Would def not feel comfortable at $6K.

Anonymous wrote:We live in HCOL area and have decided to prioritize location/schools and our monthly mortgage is a lot higher than we'd prefer.

Ages: 39, 36
Kids: 5, 3
PITI: $6k
HHI: $475k
Retirement savings: $1.75 million

Our financial advisor tells us we're doing fine but I hate seeing that mortgage payment going out every month. I tell myself it's forced savings...

Curious to see stats for others in our situation.

How are your retirement savings 1.75m at your age and given the market conditions of the past year? Are you referring only to 401ks, or to multiple brokerage accounts?

Have you ever looked at renting, it costs so much that anything 9k or less is normal and affordable.