Anonymous wrote:Hello, i make $200K/year and have $500K put down for a downpayment. I don’t have any debt to pay off. I bring in $12K/month after taxes. $3K for childcare. What should my monthly mortgage payment look like? What’s the max value home you recommend that I can afford. Stable job, 2 young kids. Single mom. Looking at McLean or Vienna.

I wouldn’t do more than $1K a month. I would buy a $500K home and pay in cash. The $1K would go towards insurance and property taxes.

Don't forget your taxes which maybe tied to your mortgage could be 1000 on top of the mortgage payment and another 100 for home owners insurance.

What excactly does single mom mean?

Dont take it wrong way. But my Mom was a widow a lady I worked with had donor eggs.

But most divorced women are not single moms in true sense. Their ex pays for stuff a lot of time too and may have partial custody

Where is your $500k down payment invested now? If it's invested in the stock market I think it would be a better bet to wait until your childcare expenses go down once your kids are in school, with the potential to be able to make a larger down payment then. I'd try to keep your monthly mortgage payment to $4,000/month or less, but that would almost certainly be a townhouse. Maybe also consider selling the rental property in order to be able make a larger down payment? If a SFH is your goal it looks like even the smaller fixer-uppers are $1.1M and up. In terms of keeping the monthly payments manageable, you should be looking at a loan amount of $500k or less.

Single mom here. If kids can walk to the Metro from your current place in Arlington, you may come to appreciate that in just a few years when they can get themselves to some of their own activities!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On $200k I’d want it under $3k per month, so maybe $750k house (250k mortgage/500 down)? With 2 young kids you have a decade of childcare and unknowns ahead of you, and it’s just you. That gives you wiggle room if you need it.

You have 5 solid years of hardcore childcare and then you move on to aftercare and summer camps - so maybe 1/2 the cost of the first five.

and the difference goes to increasing college savings and increased kid costs elsewhere.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no way I'd move. Only paying $1,100 a month is amazing. What's your age and how much retirement savings do you have? How much money will you have left after you would put down $500,000?

Things like camps and before/after care, if you need it, are expensive. Clothing, tutoring if needed, sports, various fees, all add up.

DH and I make around 280k and have saved a couple million now in our late 40s -- we always kept our housing expenses low and thst was a key to our wealth accumulation. I love never having to worry about money and being able to buy whatever small luxury we need.

I find our house to be a headache and would never own by myself-- i hate having to shell out thousands on the random things that break. We've had to pay 20 grand in the last 2 years on fixing things on our house that was built in the 70s. DH has to do basic maintenance and if I was in my own I'd need to hire someone for that in addition to lawn care.

There is no reason a woman can’t do lawn care or basic maintenance in her 40s. You’re reinforcing sexist tropes with this attitude. With YouTube tutorials anyone can do basic maintenance and unless you’re disabled you can take care of lawn care too.

DP. I’m a woman in my 40s and I did do my own yard and lawn maintenance for several years. Sure, it can be done, but I can think of 10000 other things a single mom with young kids might need or want to spend her time. Sheesh.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I have separate rental income that I’m saving for retirement. Please focus on the question I asked.

Damn, I was trying to help. You provide an incomplete income picture which is essential to answer the question you asked, I magically figure out it’s likely rental income, then you turn into a Karen.

Why come here for advice if you don’t actually want it?

I agree. I was going to ask the same question about health insurance and savings. But OP, it sounds like you have it all figured out.

Anonymous wrote:On $200k I’d want it under $3k per month, so maybe $750k house (250k mortgage/500 down)? With 2 young kids you have a decade of childcare and unknowns ahead of you, and it’s just you. That gives you wiggle room if you need it.

You have 5 solid years of hardcore childcare and then you move on to aftercare and summer camps - so maybe 1/2 the cost of the first five.

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I have separate rental income that I’m saving for retirement. Please focus on the question I asked.

I was going to recommend Vienna over McLean because it would be much easier to find a village of parents w similarly-aged kids, which you’ll want as a single mom…EXCEPT. If this is how you ask for help, that warm community experience is not going to be available to you and your children.

I live in an expensive area and have a SFH with a nice yard. Very, very few of the kids in our neighborhood, even the ones with elaborate play structures set up (and pools and tennis courts too), actually play outside in the yard. I think the fact that you have tennis courts and pool access but your kids don’t use them gives a hint as to whether they’d actually use the outside space very much. In the meantime we have spent waaaaay more than your condo fee on home maintenance and landscaping (which doesn’t include the kind of gardening you must do yourself for picture-worthy scenery). If you want your house and yard to look nice, which I think you will after living in a fancy condo, expect to put money into it. Townhouse w deck is probably a better way to go for you lifestyle-wise.

In the meantime, the downpayment should only be large enough to get your offer into play. You don’t *have* to spend the entire available $500k on your downpayment—in fact to do so would be stupid because you can grow that money so much more by putting it into other channels, as already discussed above. If your family is in a league where that doesn’t matter to you, then why don’t you just ask your parents to help you buy a place outright

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I have separate rental income that I’m saving for retirement. Please focus on the question I asked.

Yikes. You’ll get no help with that attitude. I’m not the person who asked but it’s legitimate in trying to help determine a budget. Figure it out yourself.

+1

No wonder she’s single.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no way I'd move. Only paying $1,100 a month is amazing. What's your age and how much retirement savings do you have? How much money will you have left after you would put down $500,000?

Things like camps and before/after care, if you need it, are expensive. Clothing, tutoring if needed, sports, various fees, all add up.

DH and I make around 280k and have saved a couple million now in our late 40s -- we always kept our housing expenses low and thst was a key to our wealth accumulation. I love never having to worry about money and being able to buy whatever small luxury we need.

I find our house to be a headache and would never own by myself-- i hate having to shell out thousands on the random things that break. We've had to pay 20 grand in the last 2 years on fixing things on our house that was built in the 70s. DH has to do basic maintenance and if I was in my own I'd need to hire someone for that in addition to lawn care.

There is no reason a woman can’t do lawn care or basic maintenance in her 40s. You’re reinforcing sexist tropes with this attitude. With YouTube tutorials anyone can do basic maintenance and unless you’re disabled you can take care of lawn care too.

For the entire year, my lawn maintenance took about 36 hours on a 1/4 acre lot that is about 1/2 grass. And I have a nice lawn. People act as if this is some sort of incredible hardship, to mow, edge, and fertilize a lawn.