re: Anyone ever reeeeeally stretched on a home purchase?

No, I wouldn’t do it. We’ve never purchased a home we couldn’t comfortably afford. You can be a health diagnosis or job loss away from foreclosure. I would just save until a larger down payment mitigates the mortgage.

Why not just rent? You're not going to build that much equity in 7-10 years. At best, you might break even after you consider closing costs and realtor fees when it's time to sell.

And nobody can answer your question without knowing your actual financial situation. If you bought the expensive house and the AC breaks in a month, do you have $10K to replace it?

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Why don't you stay where you are for a couple of years and just do this so that you can save up a nice chunk of change to be able to afford your A+ location? I don't like the idea of buying a home that doesn't check most of my boxes and that I know I'd move out of the first chance an A+ opportunity opens up that I can afford.

They say patience is a virtue for a reason.

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This is what I’d always expected and how I typically approach things, especially around the patience piece, but f the appreciation of homes lately has just been batshit. Even with a larger downpayment, seems the appreciation keeps moving the goalposts as fast if not faster. Part of me is like shite we need to get in the neighborhood now as who knows where things can go.

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If you are secure in your job then go for this.

The conventional wisdom of buying small, then upgrading once you have kids can be really REALLY poor from a financial perspective. No one likes to take this into account, but buying/selling and moving costs money. A lot of money at times.

The A+ neighborhood will also more likely appreciate faster/weather downturns better. There's probably a good chance that if you pass on the A+ neighborhood now, you may never get back.

I was in an A+ neighborhood, moved for work, then just a couple years later moved back. Despite making more than double what we made when we originally bought in the A+ neighborhood, we were priced out once we moved back. We still got into a great neighborhood, but the "get in" price for the neighborhood we really wanted (and had previously owned) went astronomical and we just couldn't make the numbers really work unless we cut back on other things like investments, which we weren't willing to do.

Obviously if you have variable income, or are in a vulnerable/cyclical industry, it may not be wise to max out your housing budget, but if it's reasonably doable with your budget and income, I would 100% go for the A+ neighborhood.

As you mentioned in your post, if you have a path, it can be really amazing to be secure in your home for decades vs knowing that you will want to move as soon as the opportunity presents itself. The psychological effects of knowing you're where you want to be vs knowing deep down you want to move can be substantial.

You may very well be house poor for a few years, but if a refinance opportunity or two pops up and/or your income naturally increases over the years you'll be very very happy you bit the bullet now. Maybe your businesses go absolutely bonkers, but there's a real possibility that you'll be house poor anyway if you ever decide to move to the A+ neighborhood down the line. Personally, I'd rather be house poor younger, with younger kids vs house poor in my prime earning years with older kids in the home.

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You just summed up everything I think about when considering doing it. Thank you for that!

I’d say we’re both in fairly stable industries. The biggest variable, as someone mentioned, is if the wife wants to hang-up the cleats after kids. She’s adamant she doesn’t, atleast not until there are multiple kids so I feel like we have 3-4 years before that would happen.

In my mind, we could save during those 3-4 years, she should be able to sell the business for a comfortable exit if she ever did retire, and by that time, if my business is doing what we expect it to do, then we’d be fine.

That’s the argument for doing it. I know it’s not a given either way, but I do agree with the house poor young vs old comment, 1000% agree with that. Most of my friends with young kids don’t do shite (in a good way) besides stay home and play with their kids. Once they’re teens and beyond we’d wanna take em places but shite, when they’re young, grilling and hanging at the house seems like a great time to pinch pennies!

Do it...OT will help out if times get tough

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but it would be absolutely slamming the top of our monthly budget,

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We don’t have kids yet but plan to

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then you cannot afford this home. kids are expensive, real expensive.

daycare was more expensive than my mortgage.

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It also would assume that we do make more in the future

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enough to offset increases in property taxes, insurance, and other cost of living increases? That's a hell of a bet.


Buy option A, have your kids, hopefully the are healthy normal kids. strictly manage your budget. Wait 10 years. Then take your equity and upgrade if you have to.

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Anyone ever gotten real aggressive like this?

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We bit off a little more to chew than I wanted, but we could also stay here forever if we decide.

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It also would assume that we do make more in the future as we know our expenses will go up once kids come along.

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Sounds like my wife, who keeps bringing up having a 3rd child.

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but another part of me actually thinks that level of discipline will actually be good for us longterm

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Absolutely. Sounds like you are on the right path to me.

I see someone is trying to drum up more business.

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Then what happens when...

AC blows out
Roof leaks and Insurance says not their problem
Named storm deductible hits
Wife has twins
One of you gets laid off

lots of bad scenarios.

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this is solid advice. as an additional cautionary tale....

our AC unit went out when my oldest was about 13 weeks old.
Cost us about $13k

When my youngest was an infant a bad wind storm hit our neighborhood, caused a roof leak resulting in $4k in damage, plus another $2k to replace the garage door that got ripped off it's tracks. .

A year after that, another wind storm caused $2k in fence damange.


We were able to overcome all of that, because we purchased a house easily within our budget and are frugal people. We then sold said house for $125k more than what we purchased it for. These folks out there buying $8k golf carts, with 2 car notes, and $50k in credit card debt. I don't understand how they do it.

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Part of me hates that idea, but another part of me actually thinks that level of discipline will actually be good for us longterm as right now there’s a pretty sizeable gap between what we bring in and what we spend so we do have alot of the fvck-its on dumb spending.

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Unfortunately, my nature tends to focus on the negative first. When I hear your plans and situation, I question why you don’t already have that level of discipline. I don’t know you guys, but those spending habits, especially for a woman, can be very difficult to reel in. The discipline you speak of, if already in practice, would make your current situation moot because you would have already saved thousands by not spending all of that disposable income on “fvck-its.” Be sure that that level of discipline is even possible for both of you.

I’m not crazy about that level of overextension anyway. Far too many unpredictable factors are brought into play that could wreck you financially.