re: Did y'all catch Dave Ramsey rip George Kamel apart over withdrawing 4% from retirement?

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To be accurate he recommends a 15 yr fixed/20% down W/ payments no more than 25% of take home pay which is still pretty unattainable for most first time buyers.

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Yeah his advice is completely outdated in some aspects.

Sure, yes it's great financially to only have your mortgage payment be 25% of your after-tax pay, but to require a 15 year fixed rate mortgage on top of that in todays world is absolutely tone-deaf. Hardly anyone can afford decent housing under those guidelines.

A young couple making $150k/yr who would after-tax about $9.4k a month where I live. This is NOT taking into account deductions beyond taxes, which he says he wants you to put 15% away for retirement and such. Also assume they have NO debt, which is a pretty big assumption for a young couple maybe still not long out of college.

But lets use $9.4k as best case scenario, this means under his guidelines their mortgage/taxes/ins/HOA cant be more than $2,350/mo on a 15 year mortgage. In today's market a 15 year rate averaged 6.1% last week. If they plan on putting 5% down, this means they cant go above about $240,000 home. This assume ZERO HOA fee, which most townhome places around here definitely have too. Now where I live $240,000 doesnt even get you into a starter townhome, much less single family home. Our neighbors just sold a 1900sq-ft single car garage townhome for $381k. You could buy a complete 1k sq-ft dump maybe in the bad area of town down the way for $240k, but not exactly what a couple making $150k is probably looking for.

25% of take homepay on a 15 year fixed rate mortgage is an absolute dream for probably 80-90%+ of people out there if you're buying now.

Wife and I are looking at $600k-$700k or so houses right now and for us to "afford" that under his guidelines we would need to be have an after tax pay of $19k/mo and thats with a 20% downpayment on a $600k house with no HOA and no PMI.