My husband and I have been married for 4 months but have been together for almost 8 years and are 28/29. I recently paid off my student loans and am debt free. Neither of us have ever had any credit or auto debt, but my husband has somewhere around $94,000 in grad school debt...yikes! Our combined income right now is somewhere around $80k in our current city.
Lately, our goal is to try to save $3000/month for 20 months so we can move back to our (cheaper!) home state, buy a house, and start a family. My husband will still be making $800/mo payments on his loans while we do this saving...I have three jobs to save as much as possible. Here's the thing...his family recently gave him money to pay off his loans and he is paying them back instead of the govt at a MUCH lower 2% rate...but according to official govt records, we would technically both be debt free, since the school loans show paid off, right? So our debt to income ratio would be zero? (excluding minimal credit card purchases we always pay off every month).
My father in law is a builder and my husband is an architect, so we want to build our home when we move, and do some of the finishing work ourselves to save money. I understand this is our first home and we should live below our means and don't need to go crazy with upgrades and finishes when we can save for those things later in life. We would probably build a house around $250,000 or less and preferably a 15yr fixed rate mortgage if we can afford it (the loans and living on one income are the concern). We will definitely put down 20%, saving $60k ($50k down payment and $10k for closing costs) and have at least $10k in our ER fund. IDEALLY, we would start building the house before we move states, I would get pregnant where we live now, stay with his parents for a month or two to save money while the house is finishing up, then move into our new house. My husband is planning on working with his dad and I want to be a stay at home mom. How does the pre-approval for a mortgage work when you are a)moving states AND b)going from a dual to single income home? Do none of my income/work history/tax returns count if we move and I quit working? I have excellent credit (he hasn't checked his yet). Is the only option for pre-approval when buying out of state to move first and rent a place, have my husband collect a couple paychecks first working with his dad, and then apply without my income history? We REALLY want to bring a baby home to a house (and I will admit, "nesting" in a place of our own is really important to me).
Am I being realistic to be able to afford all these changes at once? One scenario is to save for the house, be able to have a baby soon, reduce to a single income, and continue to make payments on his loans for several years (which will be harder to do on one income)...
OR
Screw the down payment and put the $60k + $800/mo loan payments ($3800/mo) towards his loans while we still have two incomes and pay them off in 3 years with gazelle intensity and focus, pausing any retirement savings, staying where we live (which I really don't want to do) and THEN start saving again for two years for a down payment? This would mean no house for at least 5 years, and no savings for a baby, and putting off a baby til my mid 30s.<---scary!
How bad is it really to have student loan payments with the above financial situation? I feel like we're doing better than most, and I guess the fact that we're paying it back to his parents rather than the govt makes it less stressful. Having a home and a baby is really important to me but I don't want to struggle on a single income paying loans and a mortgage and a family either.
All these mortgage calculators keep giving me drastically different values, and I'm not sure how the student loans play in the picture when they're technically paid off but he still owes his parents. Do we legally have to disclose that to a lender? Would they even know? Obviously we wouldn't buy anything we couldn't afford.
What would you do? I'm also wanting to start a Roth IRA and a Health Savings Account to save for future maternity expenses (tax free!). So many things to save for and places for money to go, it's overwhelming.
Submitted January 13, 2017 at 05:21AM by mkz26 http://ift.tt/2jf0YKe
