Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your income after a 401k contribution, and if so how much?

And how much emergency fund do you have?

And are any of your kids in paid child care or private school?

OP again - yes, income is after 401k contributions (we each contribute 5%, and get a 5% match), and DW is a fed who will qualify for a pension.
We are done with paid child care, kids are in public school, and will attend in-state public college.

do they know this?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here...

Our net income - after taxes and after saving for retirement - is about $11,000. So our total PITI payment will be 34% of our net income.

The good news is that we don't have any other debt (no credit cards, student loan, or car payments).

Your take home is 11k out of 15.5k? That seems crazy high. That’s over 70%!!

Agree it seems high. We make 60K + more and that's our take home

Anonymous wrote:We weren’t comfortable with more than a $200k house on a HHI of $100,000/yr so that would be a big no from us. But we are resisting the two income trap and live in the Midwest.

That's so cute

This makes me panic. There is now way after taxes and retirement savings you still have 70% of your take home. You should not count on the pension or kids going to in state college. There are all unknowns until she actually retires and college is next year.

You must have posted here because you know this wasn’t a good move. Done deal?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your income after a 401k contribution, and if so how much?

And how much emergency fund do you have?

And are any of your kids in paid child care or private school?

OP again - yes, income is after 401k contributions (we each contribute 5%, and get a 5% match), and DW is a fed who will qualify for a pension.
We are done with paid child care, kids are in public school, and will attend in-state public college.

Just make sure you use very secure birth control, if not double birth control. It sounds silly but I have so many patients have an unexpected late pregnancy.

Another kid would crash your plan.

--ob/gyn

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is your income after a 401k contribution, and if so how much?

And how much emergency fund do you have?

And are any of your kids in paid child care or private school?

OP again - yes, income is after 401k contributions (we each contribute 5%, and get a 5% match), and DW is a fed who will qualify for a pension.
We are done with paid child care, kids are in public school, and will attend in-state public college.

It seems like you are saving far too little for retirement (I know you didn’t ask for advice about that, but I would much rather max 401ks and live in a less expensive house for the money you’re putting out). Assuming you are under the newer system I can’t imagine your DW’s pension is substantial. But, what’s done is done and you’ll find a way to make it work.

Anonymous wrote:We weren’t comfortable with more than a $200k house on a HHI of $100,000/yr so that would be a big no from us. But we are resisting the two income trap and live in the Midwest.

This is how you can live in a 200k house. It’s not the 2 income trap It’s that there is actually housing stock that only cost 200k. Around here 200k gets you a non-updated 2 BR/1BA condo with HOA fee way outside the beltway. Maybe not even in a good school district. You’re not better with money, you just live somewhere cheaper. Also, you will probably never see the home appreciation we have around here. My house has gone up more than your entire annual income (125k) in less than 2 years. There are trade offs either place. I’m not knocking your choices. But it’s not like people are spending more on housing here because we fell into some sort of keeping up with the Joneses crap.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here...

Our net income - after taxes and after saving for retirement - is about $11,000. So our total PITI payment will be 34% of our net income.

The good news is that we don't have any other debt (no credit cards, student loan, or car payments).

So you are concerned you can't live on 7k a month?

+1. This. If you can live on $7.3K per month you're all set. Hopefully the house you bought is in reasonably good condition and will not need extensive repairs.

what will you be contributing to retirement each month, how old are you, and how much do you have saved for retirement now?

529 expenses? If not daycare? You should have moved the unspent money from daycare into an education plan.

You are what advisors call "house poor"

Anonymous wrote:Is your income after a 401k contribution, and if so how much?

And how much emergency fund do you have?

And are any of your kids in paid child care or private school?

OP again - yes, income is after 401k contributions (we each contribute 5%, and get a 5% match), and DW is a fed who will qualify for a pension.
We are done with paid child care, kids are in public school, and will attend in-state public college.

OP, you will be fine. If you are even halfway good at budgeting, don't eat out a ton, don't have designer tastes, you will be fine. $7k a month is more than enough to live on and is more than the US median household income (gross, not net).

We did that for years, almost the exact same numbers. It was fine. Never felt a pinch. The salary increased steadily over time and with each passing year it was a smaller percentage of income and the value of the house kept increasing. Value has more than doubled and the mortgage is now about 9% of gross, even after taking out equity during a refi for renovations.

Anonymous wrote:OP here...

Our net income - after taxes and after saving for retirement - is about $11,000. So our total PITI payment will be 34% of our net income.

The good news is that we don't have any other debt (no credit cards, student loan, or car payments).

Your take home is 11k out of 15.5k? That seems crazy high. That’s over 70%!!

Anonymous wrote:With no daycare I think you can make it work.

Have you priced summer camps? College? Activities? There is always another expense coming up.

Maybe OP will never need to buy a car and doesn't need furniture for this new house and doesn't want to go on vacation or out to eat, lives to thrift shop, and has a massive rainy day/surprise home repair fund. But this is closer to the edge than a lot of us are comfortable.

What's done is done, but OP and spouse need to do some serious budgeting, stat.