Im pretty blown away at how so many of you can do housing at 5% of gross income.I was under the impression this board had a lot of young people. Didnt know so many of you were CEOing it up at $500,000 a year.
But if we got divorced, maybe I wouldn’t be completely screwed since she’s the higher earner. Plus being single is a lot of work and dating gets expensive. But at the same time I hear all the BS that my married coworkers go through that I just laugh at.
Much of that has to do if you’re single vs. married with two incomes and when you bought, etc. If you bought in 2009 like brain, or maybe bought when you were young and not making much and haven’t traded up along with salary raises, I can see it. Probably the exception than the norm. I’m right around ~20% of gross income going to housing and I’m OK with that, obviously prefer it be lower, but I see my comp rising enough in the next couple of years (fingers crossed) to hopefully bring that closer to 10%.
With two professional incomes, its not hard to get your mortgage under 5% after a few years, if you’re not in New York or something. I’m not a CEO, nor is my wife, nor do we make a combined $500k (nor even close). Like I said as a single its much much harder to get ahead. Daycare is a killer for sure though, a downside for the married crowd, another 5% of our income there. But like I said in another thread, two incomes allows for more risk taking and the ability to make more money without fear of starvation. We could easily live on one income, so both of us can take some extra risk.
^ mind if I ask how old you are?
If your mortgage payment is $1000 a month, that means your combined income is $240,000.
not too shabby
I am not yet 30. Also remember that you can, in theory, do 2x the down payment if both spouses have saved up.
That’s remarkably accurate, for me at least.
To OP’s original question, my monthly budget and my wife’s monthly budget don’t seem to jive. We had a serious come-to-Jesus talk last night. I swear, you tell a woman to cut down on the spending and they can’t help themselves and spend more.
Women are strange.
Whether it makes economical sense to do this is another story.
^ Absolutely. But it’s a component of how some get to the 5% mortgage level. A 20% down payment versus a 40% down payment is vastly different.
I save about 50% of my after-tax income. Living in Hong Kong helps with the taxes, quite a bit. It’s the difference between keeping half your bonus and keeping 85% of it. All of those savings get invested.
^Ok, what really happened at the Tower of Joy?
^ Eddie got the best of me.