ProspectiveHomeBuye OP t1_iy9fcf3 wrote on November 29, 2022 at 7:08 PM

Reply to comment by VorlonConsu in Buying a house next year, what’s a reasonable budget for mortgage payment? by ProspectiveHomeBuye

I appreciate the response, and thanks for sharing that article. We have used multiple house affordability calculators from places like nerdwallet, Freddie Mac, and various banks, and the range we have seen is from around 375-440k with a monthly payment of 2800-3300. I’m curious as to why these are so far off from the analysis in this article? Also, how much should we be saving for retirement? There is a tool in my Transamerica account that estimates how much income we will have once we retire and with my current rate and our current Roth balances/rates it shows our projected income being well above what we currently make. I had understood that you want to save 20% of your gross, and currently we are putting about 10% into retirement and about 14% into savings.

MissMazelTov t1_iy9krkl wrote on November 29, 2022 at 7:43 PM

You are not taking into account the expense of kids in daycare or any kind of emergency or home maintenance. It's not every month but houses need regular maintenance and it's usually not on your personal savings schedule. Our water heater just needed replacement, that's $1500 right there. Fridge crapped out, that's $2000. That's not even getting into the really expensive stuff like HVAC, roof replacement, etc. That combined with the costs of kids is going to eat up that extra $1300-1800 real quick.