Quote:
Originally Posted by spunkmaster
If you and your wife take in 43K and you have a $1300 mortage you're both idiots !
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I agree, but the problem is that housing costs in many parts of the country have grown much faster than salaries. Where I live the average 3 bedroom house is around 200K. If you buy a house for 200K and can put 20K down and get around 5.7% interest your house payment is going to be around 1K a month and then add in around around 200-300 a month for taxes. You could rent, but it's not much cheaper. I would say if you make 43K and you buy a 200K house, great, then don't buy cars and get credit card debt and all that other stuff and you will still have some extra money each month to save and invest. The people that really get into trouble are the ones that buy the 200K house then go finance a new 25K car and put 10K on their credit cards buying stuff for the new house.