What’s the Perfect Budget?

[jpinpb]

The guy must think the bottom is near so he’s hanging on. I think you’re right. If there’s many for sale signs, I don’t think it is unrealistic to see them at 800k. If you’re traveling regular hours, the commute could be tough. But weren’t you looking in 4$ also? That commute won’t be much better.

[beanmaestro]

Here’s ours. We make about $100k after taxes. No kids yet.

Rent 20%
Cars/Gas/Ins 4% (two used cars, about 12k miles a year)
Utils 5%
Food 9% (6% eating in + 3% eating out)
Pets 2%
Health 3%
Fun & Vacations 11%
Down Payment Fund 20%
Roths 10%
401k 16% (+4% match)

After carefully tracking dollars in our monthly Food/Pets/Health/Fun budgets and having it be a constant irritant, we recently switched to a new system that’s working well:

Category 1: Groceries, Cars, Pets, Health. This costs whatever it does, and we don’t skimp.
Category 2: Eating out, housewares, fun, spending money. This we aim for $600-700 a month (based on averaging our old painful budget data)
Category 3: Vacations & major house improvements, which are budgeted separately.

[beanmaestro]

Here’s ours. We make about $100k after taxes. No kids yet.

Rent 20%
Cars/Gas/Ins 4% (two used cars, about 12k miles a year)
Utils 5%
Food 9% (6% eating in + 3% eating out)
Pets 2%
Health 3%
Fun & Vacations 11%
Down Payment Fund 20%
Roths 10%
401k 16% (+4% match)

After carefully tracking dollars in our monthly Food/Pets/Health/Fun budgets and having it be a constant irritant, we recently switched to a new system that’s working well:

Category 1: Groceries, Cars, Pets, Health. This costs whatever it does, and we don’t skimp.
Category 2: Eating out, housewares, fun, spending money. This we aim for $600-700 a month (based on averaging our old painful budget data)
Category 3: Vacations & major house improvements, which are budgeted separately.

[beanmaestro]

Here’s ours. We make about $100k after taxes. No kids yet.

Rent 20%
Cars/Gas/Ins 4% (two used cars, about 12k miles a year)
Utils 5%
Food 9% (6% eating in + 3% eating out)
Pets 2%
Health 3%
Fun & Vacations 11%
Down Payment Fund 20%
Roths 10%
401k 16% (+4% match)

After carefully tracking dollars in our monthly Food/Pets/Health/Fun budgets and having it be a constant irritant, we recently switched to a new system that’s working well:

Category 1: Groceries, Cars, Pets, Health. This costs whatever it does, and we don’t skimp.
Category 2: Eating out, housewares, fun, spending money. This we aim for $600-700 a month (based on averaging our old painful budget data)
Category 3: Vacations & major house improvements, which are budgeted separately.

[beanmaestro]

Here’s ours. We make about $100k after taxes. No kids yet.

Rent 20%
Cars/Gas/Ins 4% (two used cars, about 12k miles a year)
Utils 5%
Food 9% (6% eating in + 3% eating out)
Pets 2%
Health 3%
Fun & Vacations 11%
Down Payment Fund 20%
Roths 10%
401k 16% (+4% match)

After carefully tracking dollars in our monthly Food/Pets/Health/Fun budgets and having it be a constant irritant, we recently switched to a new system that’s working well:

Category 1: Groceries, Cars, Pets, Health. This costs whatever it does, and we don’t skimp.
Category 2: Eating out, housewares, fun, spending money. This we aim for $600-700 a month (based on averaging our old painful budget data)
Category 3: Vacations & major house improvements, which are budgeted separately.

[beanmaestro]

Here’s ours. We make about $100k after taxes. No kids yet.

Rent 20%
Cars/Gas/Ins 4% (two used cars, about 12k miles a year)
Utils 5%
Food 9% (6% eating in + 3% eating out)
Pets 2%
Health 3%
Fun & Vacations 11%
Down Payment Fund 20%
Roths 10%
401k 16% (+4% match)

After carefully tracking dollars in our monthly Food/Pets/Health/Fun budgets and having it be a constant irritant, we recently switched to a new system that’s working well:

Category 1: Groceries, Cars, Pets, Health. This costs whatever it does, and we don’t skimp.
Category 2: Eating out, housewares, fun, spending money. This we aim for $600-700 a month (based on averaging our old painful budget data)
Category 3: Vacations & major house improvements, which are budgeted separately.

[dumbrenter]

SD Transplant, getting back to your topic….

Do not forget that mortgage payments and taxes are interlinked.

Assuming a $4,841 take home / month as you mentioned, anybody paying greater than 50% of it in effective rent (i.e. mortgage payments after being discounted by tax effect)is setting themselves up for a disaster.

Picking half of it, say $2400 per month will result in a home value of 445K at 6% interest rate, 1.02% property taxes, $3000 housing related expenses per year (insurance, etc.) and assuming 20% down.

So, any family grossing $100K that buys a home valued more than $445K is one small financial emergency away (like a loss of job etc. or worse) from being in trouble. They are essentially betting on the fact that nothing out of ordinary will ever happen to them for the next few years.

Given that the median income in this county is less than $100K, what is the median house price again?

[dumbrenter]

SD Transplant, getting back to your topic….

Do not forget that mortgage payments and taxes are interlinked.

Assuming a $4,841 take home / month as you mentioned, anybody paying greater than 50% of it in effective rent (i.e. mortgage payments after being discounted by tax effect)is setting themselves up for a disaster.

Picking half of it, say $2400 per month will result in a home value of 445K at 6% interest rate, 1.02% property taxes, $3000 housing related expenses per year (insurance, etc.) and assuming 20% down.

So, any family grossing $100K that buys a home valued more than $445K is one small financial emergency away (like a loss of job etc. or worse) from being in trouble. They are essentially betting on the fact that nothing out of ordinary will ever happen to them for the next few years.

Given that the median income in this county is less than $100K, what is the median house price again?

[dumbrenter]

SD Transplant, getting back to your topic….

Do not forget that mortgage payments and taxes are interlinked.

Assuming a $4,841 take home / month as you mentioned, anybody paying greater than 50% of it in effective rent (i.e. mortgage payments after being discounted by tax effect)is setting themselves up for a disaster.

Picking half of it, say $2400 per month will result in a home value of 445K at 6% interest rate, 1.02% property taxes, $3000 housing related expenses per year (insurance, etc.) and assuming 20% down.

So, any family grossing $100K that buys a home valued more than $445K is one small financial emergency away (like a loss of job etc. or worse) from being in trouble. They are essentially betting on the fact that nothing out of ordinary will ever happen to them for the next few years.

Given that the median income in this county is less than $100K, what is the median house price again?

[dumbrenter]

SD Transplant, getting back to your topic….

Do not forget that mortgage payments and taxes are interlinked.

Assuming a $4,841 take home / month as you mentioned, anybody paying greater than 50% of it in effective rent (i.e. mortgage payments after being discounted by tax effect)is setting themselves up for a disaster.

Picking half of it, say $2400 per month will result in a home value of 445K at 6% interest rate, 1.02% property taxes, $3000 housing related expenses per year (insurance, etc.) and assuming 20% down.

So, any family grossing $100K that buys a home valued more than $445K is one small financial emergency away (like a loss of job etc. or worse) from being in trouble. They are essentially betting on the fact that nothing out of ordinary will ever happen to them for the next few years.

Given that the median income in this county is less than $100K, what is the median house price again?

[dumbrenter]

SD Transplant, getting back to your topic….

Do not forget that mortgage payments and taxes are interlinked.

Assuming a $4,841 take home / month as you mentioned, anybody paying greater than 50% of it in effective rent (i.e. mortgage payments after being discounted by tax effect)is setting themselves up for a disaster.

Picking half of it, say $2400 per month will result in a home value of 445K at 6% interest rate, 1.02% property taxes, $3000 housing related expenses per year (insurance, etc.) and assuming 20% down.

So, any family grossing $100K that buys a home valued more than $445K is one small financial emergency away (like a loss of job etc. or worse) from being in trouble. They are essentially betting on the fact that nothing out of ordinary will ever happen to them for the next few years.

Given that the median income in this county is less than $100K, what is the median house price again?

[svelte]

Five years ago I would never have believed I would be saying this, but I agree with Marion that having a woman’s nails done is practically a necessity. At $12/pop, it’s well worth it. And extremely sexy.

As for what one can afford for $100K/yr, all I can tell you is that when we bought our first place, our household brought in about $75K/yr and we sweated making our $1800 p&i&taxes a few times. We were really tapped out – no vacations, nothing extra except a $200/mo car payment and daycare of $100/week. It was during those years that we decided never to be in a house that ate up every penny of our income ever again. And we haven’t.

[svelte]

Five years ago I would never have believed I would be saying this, but I agree with Marion that having a woman’s nails done is practically a necessity. At $12/pop, it’s well worth it. And extremely sexy.

As for what one can afford for $100K/yr, all I can tell you is that when we bought our first place, our household brought in about $75K/yr and we sweated making our $1800 p&i&taxes a few times. We were really tapped out – no vacations, nothing extra except a $200/mo car payment and daycare of $100/week. It was during those years that we decided never to be in a house that ate up every penny of our income ever again. And we haven’t.

[svelte]

Five years ago I would never have believed I would be saying this, but I agree with Marion that having a woman’s nails done is practically a necessity. At $12/pop, it’s well worth it. And extremely sexy.

As for what one can afford for $100K/yr, all I can tell you is that when we bought our first place, our household brought in about $75K/yr and we sweated making our $1800 p&i&taxes a few times. We were really tapped out – no vacations, nothing extra except a $200/mo car payment and daycare of $100/week. It was during those years that we decided never to be in a house that ate up every penny of our income ever again. And we haven’t.

[svelte]

Five years ago I would never have believed I would be saying this, but I agree with Marion that having a woman’s nails done is practically a necessity. At $12/pop, it’s well worth it. And extremely sexy.

As for what one can afford for $100K/yr, all I can tell you is that when we bought our first place, our household brought in about $75K/yr and we sweated making our $1800 p&i&taxes a few times. We were really tapped out – no vacations, nothing extra except a $200/mo car payment and daycare of $100/week. It was during those years that we decided never to be in a house that ate up every penny of our income ever again. And we haven’t.

[Author]

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