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These threads bug me but ill post my input anyways. I bring home monthly about $2900, each quarter I bring a commission that can range from 0-$10000. I am essentially anticipating I bring home a 2k commission. Meaning my recalculated monthly take home is closer to 3500. I am looking at 180k homes which will have my mortgage around 1100-1300. Even in the quarters where I do not bring a commission paying 1300 (high end) for a home with 1600 left over. Lets say I spend 400 a month in utilities, cable, water, sewer (not likely) that only puts me at 1700. Say I spend another 500 a month on groceries (very high for me) im at 2200, then I have 700 each month near worst case scenario for fun/investing/travel anything I want.
Realistically I expect for a 180K home with 10% down including PMI, Mortgage, Insurance, tax to spend about $1250 a month for mortgage.
Utilities $60-130 (though the house I am looking at has a hers rating of under 50)
Directv ($50.00) a month
Cable internet (19.99)
Water (~$50.00)
Gas ($20.00)
Right there puts me about a $1490 average for my living cost not including food
I now have ~$1,400 a month left over.
Car Payment of $360 takes me down to 1040.
Last month I spent $240 in groceries
Therefore Im looking at 800 a month left over including car payment.
Single young male so I plan on having a roommate. All of my living cost were just nearly cut in half, I now have ~$1500 ish of my 2900 left after everything each month.
If I don't have a roommate I only have $800.
This home would be more than 3.5 times what I bring home, yet affordability wise I don't see how this is that much of a struggle. These numbers are actually quite conservative to.
These are why these threads are dumb. I don't feel there should be a set average based on gross or take home pay. It is all about lifestyle choices.
These threads bug me but ill post my input anyways. I bring home monthly about $2900, each quarter I bring a commission that can range from 0-$10000. I am essentially anticipating I bring home a 2k commission. Meaning my recalculated monthly take home is closer to 3500. I am looking at 180k homes which will have my mortgage around 1100-1300. Even in the quarters where I do not bring a commission paying 1300 (high end) for a home with 1600 left over. Lets say I spend 400 a month in utilities, cable, water, sewer (not likely) that only puts me at 1700. Say I spend another 500 a month on groceries (very high for me) im at 2200, then I have 700 each month near worst case scenario for fun/investing/travel anything I want.
Realistically I expect for a 180K home with 10% down including PMI, Mortgage, Insurance, tax to spend about $1250 a month for mortgage.
Utilities $60-130 (though the house I am looking at has a hers rating of under 50)
Directv ($50.00) a month
Cable internet (19.99)
Water (~$50.00)
Gas ($20.00)
Right there puts me about a $1490 average for my living cost not including food
I now have ~$1,400 a month left over.
Car Payment of $360 takes me down to 1040.
Last month I spent $240 in groceries
Therefore Im looking at 800 a month left over including car payment.
Single young male so I plan on having a roommate. All of my living cost were just nearly cut in half, I now have ~$1500 ish of my 2900 left after everything each month.
If I don't have a roommate I only have $800.
This home would be more than 3.5 times what I bring home, yet affordability wise I don't see how this is that much of a struggle. These numbers are actually quite conservative to.
These are why these threads are dumb. I don't feel there should be a set average based on gross or take home pay. It is all about lifestyle choices.
You are forgetting a lot of other fixed costs such as retirement, savings, car insurance ect to add on there. My monthly income is almost double and only did a 144k mortgage.
My retirement comes out before my take home pay, and I have a nice matching program. I did not mention car insurance but I am around $85.00 a month for car insurance.The $800-$1500 a month was the savings/ money to I can spend if I need to. Take into account for car insurance and gas lets takes another $150.00 off these cost which will put me at $650-$1350 worst case scenario. Mind you I am being very very conservative with these numbers as I do not actually spend that much.
Does your house have a lawn? My water bill in the summer is more like $300/month when we have to run sprinklers constantly to keep the trees and grass from dying. I would double your utility costs to be realistic. You are budgeting around $180/month for utilities, I have a larger house than you are contemplating true, but my monthly utilities are more like $850/month not counting optional stuff like alarm monitoring, land line phone and lawn service. You also don't have a budget for home maintenance I would put $100/month towards that.
i dont think Texas counted on having any savings to put away each month. "700 left over for worst case scenario,fun etc."
you should be banking a healthy portion of your take home pay into some type of savings. don't rely on 401k or a pension. take $400 of that 700 for savings and you have 300 to live on and save up for "worst case scenario". my taxes and insurance for my home hit within a month of each other. that's close to $7,000 i have to pay out. with your type of savings plan that'd break you. i dont even live in a HOA that has a fee or nor do i pay that much in property tax considering what some people do
my worst case scenario was last year. AC failure and need to replace everything from duct work to insulation. over $9,000. still had to pay taxes and insurance 2 months later. from my take home pay, i put into savings at least the same amount i pay to my mortgage.
Does your house have a lawn? My water bill in the summer is more like $300/month when we have to run sprinklers constantly to keep the trees and grass from dying. I would double your utility costs to be realistic. You are budgeting around $180/month for utilities, I have a larger house than you are contemplating true, but my monthly utilities are more like $850/month not counting optional stuff like alarm monitoring, land line phone and lawn service. You also don't have a budget for home maintenance I would put $100/month towards that.
Yeah his numbers do seem a bit short of real costs. I wohld add around 25% more to each of his averages. Also forgetting hoa.
i dont think Texas counted on having any savings to put away each month. "700 left over for worst case scenario,fun etc."
you should be banking a healthy portion of your take home pay into some type of savings. don't rely on 401k or a pension. take $400 of that 700 for savings and you have 300 to live on and save up for "worst case scenario". my taxes and insurance for my home hit within a month of each other. that's close to $7,000 i have to pay out. with your type of savings plan that'd break you. i dont even live in a HOA that has a fee or nor do i pay that much in property tax considering what some people do
my worst case scenario was last year. AC failure and need to replace everything from duct work to insulation. over $9,000. still had to pay taxes and insurance 2 months later. from my take home pay, i put into savings at least the same amount i pay to my mortgage.
Soooo true. Every couple years it seems i have a 2-3k suprise that results me having to pull from savings. These are things that a lot ppl dont want to save for...
Does your house have a lawn? My water bill in the summer is more like $300/month when we have to run sprinklers constantly to keep the trees and grass from dying. I would double your utility costs to be realistic. You are budgeting around $180/month for utilities, I have a larger house than you are contemplating true, but my monthly utilities are more like $850/month not counting optional stuff like alarm monitoring, land line phone and lawn service. You also don't have a budget for home maintenance I would put $100/month towards that.
I have a company phone, and do not use a land line. I do not have a yard so I do not need water for the yard or any lawn maintence. I pay 16.95 a month with Smith Thompson for home alarm.
If your utilities are $850.00 a month thats some of the highest I have ever seen. How old is your home?
i dont think Texas counted on having any savings to put away each month. "700 left over for worst case scenario,fun etc."
you should be banking a healthy portion of your take home pay into some type of savings. don't rely on 401k or a pension. take $400 of that 700 for savings and you have 300 to live on and save up for "worst case scenario". my taxes and insurance for my home hit within a month of each other. that's close to $7,000 i have to pay out. with your type of savings plan that'd break you. i dont even live in a HOA that has a fee or nor do i pay that much in property tax considering what some people do
my worst case scenario was last year. AC failure and need to replace everything from duct work to insulation. over $9,000. still had to pay taxes and insurance 2 months later. from my take home pay, i put into savings at least the same amount i pay to my mortgage.
This is where escrows come into play so I am not expected to drop my insurance and taxes in all at one time but that comes out of my monthly mortgage which was calculated above.
These threads bug me but ill post my input anyways. I bring home monthly about $2900, each quarter I bring a commission that can range from 0-$10000. I am essentially anticipating I bring home a 2k commission. Meaning my recalculated monthly take home is closer to 3500. I am looking at 180k homes which will have my mortgage around 1100-1300. Even in the quarters where I do not bring a commission paying 1300 (high end) for a home with 1600 left over. Lets say I spend 400 a month in utilities, cable, water, sewer (not likely) that only puts me at 1700. Say I spend another 500 a month on groceries (very high for me) im at 2200, then I have 700 each month near worst case scenario for fun/investing/travel anything I want.
Realistically I expect for a 180K home with 10% down including PMI, Mortgage, Insurance, tax to spend about $1250 a month for mortgage.
Utilities $60-130 (though the house I am looking at has a hers rating of under 50)
Directv ($50.00) a month
Cable internet (19.99)
Water (~$50.00)
Gas ($20.00)
Right there puts me about a $1490 average for my living cost not including food
I now have ~$1,400 a month left over.
Car Payment of $360 takes me down to 1040.
Last month I spent $240 in groceries
Therefore Im looking at 800 a month left over including car payment.
Single young male so I plan on having a roommate. All of my living cost were just nearly cut in half, I now have ~$1500 ish of my 2900 left after everything each month.
If I don't have a roommate I only have $800.
This home would be more than 3.5 times what I bring home, yet affordability wise I don't see how this is that much of a struggle. These numbers are actually quite conservative to.
These are why these threads are dumb. I don't feel there should be a set average based on gross or take home pay. It is all about lifestyle choices.
That seems like it's really pushing it IMO. I purchased my first house at 2.2 times my salary, but that quickly went up and the house payment became largely a non-issue after getting married (it went down to about 0.8 of our combined salary).
We're building another home now, and the purchase price is 2.4 times our salary (no bonus included), but the loan is probably around 1.9 times our combined salary with a conservative bonus estimate.
I really tried to keep it around the 2-2.2 times our salary range, which were mostly resales, but we kept missing out over and over on houses that were getting offers usually days before we could get in with an offer. I imagine another 3-5 years down the road, my salary growth will get that down to a very manageable level.
I would be freaking at 3.5 times my salary, unless I really expected my salary to grow by quite a bit in the next few years, but even then that's a big leap of faith. Although I will preface this by saying that it's easier to go to a higher multiple of your salary when you earn more. As you're seeing, at <$40k/yr net, you're not talking about much buffer at higher multiples of your salary, as that ~25% doesn't go very far. But when you're above $100k/yr net, then it starts to become easier to go to higher multiples, because that same ~25% left over is now $2k. That can offer as a reasonable buffer.
I still wouldn't suggest those high multiples for almost anybody though.
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