[quote=UCGal][quote=Rustico]It seems like buying something that requires two incomes to “sustain” is always stretching.[/quote]
I have to agree with Russell here. Maybe I come to that perspective because I owned a house before I got married… As did my husband. So the idea of doing it on a single income was natural.
In an ideal world, folks would buy based on one income… which allows the other income to fund savings, etc…[/quote]
Well, UCGal, depends on the income and the house…I don’t share that perspective…When I got married I was a postdoc, earning 30K or so…It was unconceivable then to me to own a house on my income – even later, as a programmer analyst in my mid 30s earning 40k…What kind of house I could have gotten that was 100K then? The bubble was almost full blown…LOL…I had practically no savings at all for a downpayment either. That was not many years ago either mind you – less than 10! – so we were already in the housing bubble… To us it was clear that if we want to have a decent house & life we need both incomes… That was our perspective.
As a note, I am not trying to live on one income and save the other exclusively. Life is short, and we haven’t indulged much so far as student/postdoc as we worked very hard during those times. Sure we would save a good part. But we want to be able to afford the mortgage AND put food on the table IF we will be on ONE income – cutting out non-essentials.
