I ask this because I've recently made an observation. First, some backstory...
My husband and I are in our mid 30's, and we are of the mindset of saving as much as we can. We refuse to charge credit cards, share a car that we own outright, and aren't frivolous spenders.
We just bought a $275k house even though we would have qualified for a house of up to $400k with our current combined income. We wanted to stay under 300k because a) we had enough saved up to put down 20% for that range, and b) we're at a juncture where we're open to having a baby, so we wanted to buy a house we could comfortably afford on my husband's income alone to account for me taking some time off or possibly scaling back to just part time work.
As all of you homeowners know, buying a new house is a pretty consuming experience. As a result, it's been one of the primary topics of conversation with our friends because two of them (and their respective partners) have also recently bought or are under contract on new homes. We also know several acquaintances/coworkers/etc who have also bought within the past 5 years or so.
Something I've noticed is that 3 of the 4 aforementioned couples have all bought homes in the $440-480k range. I, of course, don't know the details of their financial situations, but based on their occupations, I can't imagine that their respective household incomes are beyond $150k, if even that. I mean, one of my friends got laid off and works short-term contract gigs and her husband is in medical device sales (which I've heard brings in lots of money, but I'm not certain how much), but they both have car payments for relatively new cars. One of my other friends who bought a $440k house last year is a high school science teacher and her husband works at Lowe's and does occasional general contracting work on the side.
As someone who values having financial wiggle room, I just can't wrap my mind around this. So, this brings me back to the question posed as the subject. I mean, maybe these people have way more money beyond their paychecks, but 3 of 4 couples my age? I'm not so sure...
Submitted May 29, 2019 at 09:36PM by RistrettoShots http://bit.ly/2QzJM0h
