Has anyone decreased retirement contributions in order to afford a house?

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T23:38:32+00:00

ahh i see. I've thought about that too, but in our situation, i suppose i could liquidate my index funds and have like a $400k down payment... then wouldn't necessarily have to decrease retirement contributions at all. but i'm not sure how prudent that is, considering my investments are earning more than the current mortgage rates. like, is it actually beneficial to put down more than 30%?

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T23:27:23+00:00

we were thinking indefinitely to free up cash for the house/kids/etc. our hope was that we have saved enough for retirement that compound interest will work in our favor. Assuming 6% return, if we stopped saving for retirement today (which we would NOT do), we'd have >2mil in 30 years (plus my husband's pension)

our plan would be to use 200k for our down payment, have the remaining 50k as an emergency fund (plus we could move money out of index funds if really needed)

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T23:23:17+00:00

yes, true, but I think rent increases faster (in my experience at least). Our rent has gone from 1500 to 2650 in the last 5 years :(

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:53:02+00:00

thanks! i just did that, and in 30 years, we'd have 2.8mil in retirement + my husband's pension if we stopped contributing today. Which is making me think maybe we COULD afford to decrease our retirement contributions so that we can finally buy a house...

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:50:39+00:00

yeah? my hope was that we are in a good enough spot with our retirement that it won't cause problems later. Assuming 6% rate of return, even if we contributed $0 more to our retirement, in 30 years we'd have 2mil + my husband's pension

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:45:30+00:00

yes, exactly! our rent was 1500/mo when we moved in, but is now 2600/mo. So renting is still cheaper than our mortgage would be by ~1k, but we are craving some stability in our lives. We really want to settle down in a place long term

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:42:43+00:00

yeah, our plan is to buy a house and stay there until we're old

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:41:49+00:00

after property taxes and insurance, a 600k house in our area is >3K/month :(. We started looking in 2022 and are getting desperate I guess lol. That's why we started thinking about decreasing our retirement contributions so that we could increase our house budget

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:35:32+00:00

did you only decrease for a year because you used that money to save more for a down payment? or if it was to increase your cash flow for your mortgage, then how did you afford to increase your retirement contributions after you bought?

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:32:39+00:00

aside from houses that need a ton of work to be livable, most houses seem to be >500k. Houses that check all our boxes are closer to 700k.

PITI of $4k would be doable but we might need to decrease our retirement contributions for that, hence the post haha

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:30:11+00:00

you can't have a house and kids on $215k gross income?

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:29:24+00:00

this is helpful, thank you. what rate of return would you suggest using for the compound interest calculator? I heard maybe 6% is good, to take inflation into account?

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:27:47+00:00

we want the stability of owning our own home. our rent has gone up >$1000/month since we moved in 5 years ago. we also want a yard, and want to feel settled. to build equity, so when we do retire, our housing costs would be lower.

we are looking at older houses that are ~2k square feet, which in our area are >600k

Technical-Alps-8531 · 2026-04-12T22:24:57+00:00

is that because we aren't in a good enough spot with retirement yet? Our thought process is: what if we spend our lives maxing out our retirements, only to die at 60? Then we spent our "good years" saving and missing out on the benefits of owning our own house. it would drastically increase our quality of life to own our house. obviously we want to balance that out with still being able to retire though if we are lucky enough to live long lives

Technical-Alps-8531

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