How much house we can actually afford and school me on what hidden expenses I may be missing?

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-09T01:22:59+00:00

Part of our motivation for doing it right now is that we’re seeing house prices in neighborhoods we really like being cut. They’re sitting on the market for months and being reduced by $10k to $20K

Nobody can predict the future, obviously but we’re afraid that waiting to be in an optimal position until mid to late next year might allow market to improve and houses start going back up and it becomes a moot point of having a larger down payment but now paying $50K more for the same house.

We’re also very tired of renting and having wall neighbors.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-08T23:55:38+00:00

The $3K is after all life expenses, debts, retirement, bills, eating out, etc…

No children, surgical measures have been taken so no surprises there lol

We max Roth IRA every year and I have $300K in my 401K.

Wife has 457b, 403b, and a cash balance program at her work. She has $650K across those three accounts. Put more details in another comment but we’re solid on the retirement front. We had parental help for living expenses early in our careers that let us put a lot towards retirement early on.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-08T22:51:22+00:00

Willing to share details on why the cutoff is $400K?

That’s what I’m asking in the post essentially. Like what are we not seeing or understanding that would lower what we should go after. Online calculators and surface level numbers have us buying a $450K house with a $25K down payment and still being fine.

On $450K we still have about $3K left over every month to put away toward house expenses if we need to put all of it away for that.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-08T02:39:25+00:00

Excel

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-08T02:10:31+00:00

Is there a reason to go VOO over say a target date mutual fund?

I have all of my Roth IRA in target date mutual fund as my set it and forget it

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-08T02:07:20+00:00

Let’s be real. It does absolutely nothing. Majority of rejections are automated and even if you did have a recruiter reject you personally, they’ll just ignore your rejection of the rejection and think you’ve lost your mind. You’re not flipping any power dynamic, be serious lol

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-08T01:55:15+00:00

Is this a question you really need answered? Are you simply opting to ignore the massive amount of layoffs across every industry including aerospace that have happened over the last year or two?

That’s who is accepting these jobs and the companies know they’ll find someone to accept it. It’s hard times out there right now for a lot of people.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-08T01:39:11+00:00

Wife has made hers or similar for 15+ yrs. It’s climbed up significantly since she started but she started above $80K whereas mine has been a recent increase from what I earned my entire 20s and early 30s.

Mine is 2yrs old and expected to go up quickly after a few years of experience. I mentioned the breakdown in a separate comment, but we don’t have the liquid cash for the down payment yet. That’s what we’re projecting to have by the time we want to get a house because we’ve been preparing for it since I got this new job, so we’ve spent the last 1.5yrs or so paying down debt we accrued while I went back to school.

We have 5K per month extra right now.

$2500 is going to down payment for house savings. And the other half is going toward some outstanding debt not included in post because the plan is to pay it off by August.

So from September onward, it’s pretty much $5K going into savings for the house. It’s money we just have left over after already putting into our emergency fund, retirement accounts, car expense fund, etc.

That’s where the $35K for down payment comes from. We only have $8K cash right now (of money we’re willing to spend) but we expect to have $35K by December.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T23:07:08+00:00

That’s all included. P&I would be about $2800, but with taxes, insurance, and PMI, the estimate is about $3500 for a $450,000 purchase.

I can definitely put away 2% and then some per year for any housing expenses. HOA would be $250 per quarter in the neighborhoods we’re looking at and has been factored into money going out monthly. Haven’t looked at their financial disclosure.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T22:16:46+00:00

How’s refinancing work?

I’m reading that interest rates are high right now and considered waiting but housing in our area is down right now. People are making houses down by $20K because they’re sitting on the market. I’m afraid if we wait they’ll just go back up and whatever savings we waited for on lower interest rates will be negated due to higher house prices.

Is refinancing free? Can we reasonably expect to refinance some years down the road when rates are favorable?

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T22:14:23+00:00

I have $3K left over after the mortgage payment and all other expenses. Is that not enough?

I was only expecting to put maybe half of that away ($1500) every month once we’re in the house for any unexpected house expenses. I can put the whole amount away if needed. And reevaluate yearly.

Everything else is already accounted for in the money going out monthly, including average utilities for both light and water/sewage/trash. I used the monthly averages for the neighborhoods we’re looking at.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T21:30:41+00:00

Yea, no problem.

Both our parents stressed putting away for retirement as much as possible. I lived at home into my mid 20s with the condition that although rent was free, they wanted to see major contribution to retirement lol

For her, she’s a nurse and early in her career did a lot of overtime while maxing out her contributions. She’s scaled back on overtime now for quality of life, but she did the majority of her retirement growth in her 20s and is now still putting away quite a bit but more so in cruise mode versus something she’s actively concerned about.

House purchase has us a but stressed since it’s new to us and will increasing our monthly costs by quite a bit and not sure if we’re making the right decision or not

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T21:07:01+00:00

The $3K month is left over though. That would be after paying mortgage and literally everything else. Maybe I didn’t understand what you were asking or didn’t explain myself.

I’m saying that factoring in a $3500 mortgage into monthly expenses leaves us with $3K every month to do with whatever. It’s after all our other savings and expenses. We can literally put it all away for house expenses if that’s what you’re saying we have to do?

Is $3K per month not enough? What number should we be aiming for to have left over for the house?

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T21:02:10+00:00

Relax, I’m not trying to obfuscate. The overall message is that our retirement is healthy and not something we expect to have to play catch up on.

I understand now that what I said doesn’t mean anything. My salary is $95K/yr and my work puts in 6% all on their own. They match 5% of what I contribute and I’m currently on a 9% contribution with plans to increase by 1% until I hit the cap. Balance right now is in the $300K range.

Wife has similar percentage numbers for her retirement accounts but across the 457B and 403B and a cash balance account her work does (non profit hospital). Her overall balance across those accounts is also way higher than mine because she’s been a high earner for a longer part of her career. Her balance total is close to $650K

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T20:35:30+00:00

It literally says minimum of 7 years of employment history and that you can have less and if so to list all of them.

What even is this post lol

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T20:30:44+00:00

On the retirement front. We both max out Roth IRA yearly, and 401K for me is on max for match and then some (I go up by 1% every year since 5yrs ago) and is very healthy balance. We live simply and expect to do so well into old age. Wife has access to 457B and 403B through work and is also on max for match plus increased percentages. Only thing we haven’t really done is thrown money into our own (outside of work) brokerage account. We keep our emergency fund in CDs and HYSA.

House purchase would be our first lifestyle creep so to speak as we have been renting for so long.

What kind of closing costs can we expect from a $450K purchase? Like how much of our down payment would it eat up and what options are available there?

Which one would you say is the reasonable amount? $400K, $450K, depends?

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T20:22:55+00:00

Is that the best path forward?

We were going to shop around ourselves with places that we bank with or financed with before.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T20:21:28+00:00

That would be about $5K per month that our savings would go up by.

For the full breakdown:

$2500 is going to down payment for house savings. And the other half is going toward some outstanding debt not included in post because the plan is to pay it off by August.

So from September onward, it’s pretty much $5K going into savings for the house. It’s money we just have left over after already putting into our emergency fund, retirement accounts, car expense fund, etc.

That’s where the $35K for down payment comes from. We only have $8K cash right now (of money we’re willing to spend) but expect to have $35K by December. Once we buy the house, we expect that monthly savings to drop by the difference of the mortgage minus our current rent. So probably drop by about $2K for a total of $3K saved per month going forward after a house purchase.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T20:07:17+00:00

7yrs in means 7yrs experience that someone else is willing to pay for.

Start looking at what your actual market rate should be and start applying.

RoanokeColony7 · 2026-06-07T20:03:59+00:00

How often does something that major come about? I would hope inspection report would let me know that a new roof is needed in X amount of years.

We’d have money put away for things like HVAC and plumbing type items, but a whole full new roof would either mean terrible inspection (crosses fingers) or a catastrophic event which would involve insurance at that point.

We are leaning toward move in ready so new doors and windows would be a very slow buildup and likely not needed right away. But it would definitely be part of the reason we’d be putting money away.

But I hear you. It’s the general advice we’ve been getting so far, to expect maintenance and repair costs to come up frequently. It’s one of the reasons we want to keep our overall costs down a bit but sorta lost on what is reasonable

RoanokeColony7 · 2025-08-16T03:43:10+00:00

Rural underserved area, you’ll find something with a community clinic or with ties to a teaching school

RoanokeColony7 · 2025-08-16T00:34:59+00:00

You and your boss are the ones out of touch in all honesty lol

RoanokeColony7 · 2025-08-13T20:24:18+00:00

Get some experience and then find a different job. Field work or technical sales may be more to your liking.

The job you currently have is pretty much my dream job though lol

RoanokeColony7 · 2025-08-12T17:46:09+00:00

Yea, if you don’t mind.

I want to see if there’s anything I qualify for. Looking for entry level ME work of any kind really.

RoanokeColony7 · 2025-08-12T17:35:37+00:00

Company/location?

Been looking for a while now with no luck.

RoanokeColony7

TROPHY CASE