What is an average, safe % of monthly post tax income to spend on home.

18-24%

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Both the wife and I are cheap and we like having a very affordable mortgage.

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I would stay at the lower end of the range. Some folks say 28% of gross, but I think gross income is a meaningless number. I think 15 to 20 percent of net is good, and you should stay at the lower end of that, based on your post, IMHO.

20% is a safe mark of mortgage to post tax net income

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I would feel so poor if I spent 28% of gross on housing.

Dave ramsey says 25% of net for the top end. Sounds reasonable to me, I would still feel poor.

I think it also depends on how much you put down, what other debt you have, how old are your kids, etc.

I would be pretty nervous if I had a lot of net worth tied up in my house and a high mortgage payment

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Agree with all of this

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So, there goes any thought of saving money, retiring or whatever on that $100k salary.

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well I think that depends on what else you spend your money on. But yeah, that is a lot of cheese to spend on housing.

btw, I just calculated that our "net" spend on housing is almost 30%. But I removed savings from that. So (Mortgage+insruance+taxes)/(Gross-Taxes-Savings) is close to 30%.

We do save a healthy percentage of our income

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btw, I just calculated that our "net" spend on housing is almost 30%. But I removed savings from that.

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My mortgage is right about 12% of my gross and 20% of my net, but I omit retirement savings from the net calculation. Even on a good day, I wouldn't be much above 18 or 20 percent of gross.

The only exception might be - I might overleverage into "Forever House" in a couple of years, if my current house gets flipped, debt free, into rental income. But, that would ultimately be a wash. It would be a form of debt consolidation into the family residence.

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What is a safe, normal % to spend on mortgage?

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I just got married, and my wife just got a higher paying job right before the wedding. We're at 16% of gross on mortgage + PMI. It's too early to tell how much I like it, but I know for damn sure that I wasn't thrilled about our situation when we were at a little more that 21% of gross.

That being said, my employer gives me a pretty good bonus, so technically it's lower than 16% gross yearly, but I can't rely on it every year, so obviously we operate our budget on base salary. You would think a 5% difference was no big deal, but staying within our budget at 21% was a bitch if any unexpected expense was happened upon.

depends on how much you spend that isn't on your home. If you travel a lot or love to spend money, that percentage will be smaller than someone who likes to stay home and doesn't spend a lot.

I spent about 18 percent of our paycheck. By paycheck, I mean after all taxes, 401k contributions, wife's pension contributions, health insurance and all those type of deduction. I do not feel house poor. I feel comfortable. I think above 25% I would feel less comfortable.

Percent is quite useless because it is all relative to earnings. 30% of 20,000 a month still leaves a large chunk of cash for disposable income. 30% of 3000 and disposable is tight.