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I'm in the "you only live once" camp and my wife and I plan on building a house that is about 3x combined salary in value but will be about 2.7x in mortgage. There are alot of other factors that go into us taking this plunge though. For instance, we live in Pittsburgh where the housing crash...

Nice post, thanks.

Pittsburgh is about as good as you can get for a metro area. My 120k house is worth over double that in Philly. And you're post makes my calculations that much more interesting. By using the 0 CC debt calculation, the house we are looking to build hovers right around that 28% mark. Now you...

I guess that's what I'm getting at. I know I don't need to use a CC but I do for the cash back I get. So I'm guessing from your post that my initial post is correct. I can get away with 0 CC payment each month...just don't use it, but again, I choose to get that "free money" by using it. So...

So I've been reading that most lenders don't like a back end (debt to income) ratio of anything greater than 36%. I'm assuming that this 36% is what most online calculators use to compute your "home affordability". I've read the BE ratio is comprised of debt such as mortgage payment, school...

Good question. We were planning on using the equity for the new home and had discussed about renting but the neighborhood we are currently in doesn't appeal to renters. The house next to us has been renting since we moved in 7 years ago and the longest anybody has stayed there is one year...

I've learned some very hard lessons about used cars and refuse to purchase another one. We did make sure we bought 2 reliable vehicles that had great resale values. So far we've done right on the reliable part.

I've been telling the wife the same exact thing. She's afraid that if we don't do something now, that the price will be out of our range next year. I told her that it was unlikely at this point given the market conditions.

Yep, this would be the last house we ever live in. Neither of us plan to (or want to) move from Pittsburgh unless absolutely necessary.

From Pittsburgh here Look forward to reading some interesting material on this forum So.....some stats Married, first kid due in about a month Supply Chain Manager for a large CPG company $130K combined per year with 12.5% bonus on $85k (+/- depending upon performance) about 70K in 401k...