Rustico, if you think that someone making 150K can save 75K your nutz. First off taxes and deductions take damn near 40% of your check. With the AMT you loose most of the deductions you would otherwise claim. Then you have to live. I have a wife and 3 teenage daughters. You should see my clothing bill per month! I have a hard time saving 1k per month after expenses.

I’m not saying you can’t buy a home on 150K. Obviously you can. But at that income level you should be able to buy a nice home in a nice area and still have enough money left over to save some, take vacations and drive decent cars. With today’s prices you can’t. A nice home in a nice area for a family of 5 is $700k minimum. Even in Riverside where I’ve been looking the nicer stuff is over $600k and the ones I like are over $800k. Even with 20% down that payment would be about 50% of my monthly take home (before PITI) and I can’t even come close to affording the 800k house.