What is your PITI percentage compared to take home pay?

[Violet]

What is your PITI (or Rent) percentage compared to take home pay? Do you feel like you could afford more than what you pay now without seriously affecting your lifestyle? 

For the sake of the poll, take home pay is the amount deposited into your checking account. I don't care if that does or doesn't include retirement savings. 

This thread is bought to you by a crazy discussion with my finance-minded co-workers and I need to know where MM falls.

[fortnightlily]

About 23%.

[starryfish]

About 20%

[WinterWine]

32%. It used to be much higher. But we still save a lot and live comfortably with this.

[lys]

Mortgage is paid off so we live in the house for the cost of utilities, insurance, taxes, maintenance and and renovations (which for now are all completed) .

General rule of thumb is for housing (either ret/mortgage + insurance, utilities and genera maintenance) to be no more than 28% of your take home pay (30% in a HCOL area)

[bostonmichelle]

About 18% we could afford more but we are looking to TTC shortly and wanted to keep it low with daycare on the horizon.

[raangoli]

33% I think but were HCOL and that includes extra towards principle.

We could probably afford more but we don't want to; also property taxes in NJ suck.

[imojoebunny]

Ours is less than 10%. We could afford a lot more, but went with the house that met our needs, in favor of spending/saving in other areas. My first house was 45% of my take home at first, and became much less, as I moved up in my career, around 15%. 45% now would be an utter disaster. It really just depends on where you are in life, and how much you need to spend to get what you need vs. what you want.

[pinkdutchtulips]

40% yay VHCOL !

[irene adler]

When We are on one income (mine), 28%

When we are both working, 10%.

On one income, our payment is comfortable. If we consistently had 2 incomes, we could easily afford a much larger payment.

[FormerlyRR]

6%, no mortgage, but I don't make much money.

[savan]

Now: 32% 27%
In 2 weeks when we drop my income: 45%  40%

We have a HHI so we could afford quite a bit more right now. When I quit working things will be a lot tighter and we definitely could not afford more. I'm very happy we bought conservatively so I have the option of staying home.

ETA: Went to mint to get exact take home calculations and updated the percentage based on what we took home last year.

[BAMFMrsB]

It's 20% of my+DH's take home pay.

Caveat: MY take home is crappy because we pre-pay for on-site daycare out of my paycheck and it saves us some $$$ that way. So 20% is WITH that already taken out. Once DS goes to pre-k in Aug it'll be 19% and once he's out of daycare next year it'll be ~16%.



Sidebar $$MM awesomeness: we just refi'd our mortgage and now pay almost the same $$$$ we paid for our apartment 3 years ago for our house payment. Rising comps in our area have been so beneficial to us.

[msmerymac]

1. Just about 15%. We re-fied to a 15 year mortgage last year.
2. Yes, absolutely, but we want children and plan to sock a lot of money in other areas, like 529s and maxing retirement and helping out with family stuff. This makes it not tight at all.

[turkletsmom]

17% MCOL. Can't afford more right now but once we stop paying for 3 in daycare I feel like we'll be able to afford a palace. LOL.

[ssmjlm]

Our new house is 32%. Hmmm that seems high, but it doesn't feel like it.

And technically that is low bc our real estate assessment was based on our lot and we haven't gotten the special assessment now that we've built and moved in.

Then again I have so many deductions from my paycheck that my math might be off.

ETA: yep forgot about the daycare fsa that comes out.

This is our stretch. This is our forever home we built and picked everything inside. We put over six figures down in order to have a payment we felt we could live with.

[laurensmomma]

25%.

[Violet]

May 20, 2016 18:46:38 GMT -5 @juno said:

Less than half what it was when we purchased. Thanks to raises and refinancing (both the 50% lower rate and the second downpayment we had to bring to the table to get out from underwater lowered our payment significantly). I'm side-eyeing 26-year-old me right now. I'm glad it worked out for us, but it could have been bad (and in 2008, it felt really, really bad).

Are you going to come back and tell us what the conversation was?  

The conversation was basically Dave Ramsey on steroids. That someone would be absolutely nuts to have over 20-25%. I don't think they realize that's not feasible with HCOL and not everyone is as like minded as them. I was wondering how high MM would average.


Personally, our rent is at 19% and when we buy we will probably be ~30% for the first few years of our mortgage.

[chimera]

1)Take home 13%

2)We could afford more -but we'd need to keep a stricter budget to stay on track with savings vs our travel habit (we spent more on travel than we spent on housing last year, but major bucket list trip.) It's just the two of us so we don't need more house.

[Deleted]

22%. We could afford a bit more. If we went with a 30-year loan instead of our 15-year we could afford a lot more.

[thebreakfastclub]

33% with me on unemployment and a 15 year mortgage. With my old salary, more like 18%.

[steamboat185]

28-29%, but we have a ton of deductions and are paying off our mortgage in 13ish years.

[ribollita]

15% on a 15-year mortgage

[winnied]

26% for rent in HCOL. We could afford more but we want to save up for awhile.

[daisypaloma]

27%. Could be better.

[crashgizmo]

40% in a HCOL (Los Angeles) with our base salaries. DH is paid about an additional 20% on commission, so that helps. We also have no other debt.

[mrst2]

16% we could afford more of course but it's best this way because both kids are in private school.

[Deleted]

21%. Half our payment is just school/property tax escrow. If I lived in a different state I'd likely buy a much more expensive house since it would end up being a similar payment. I wouldn't go more than a few hundred more than our current payment though, I like not being stretched.

We have a bigger house than we need and in a good school district. If only my crystal ball would have told me we'd deal with IF I may have just stayed in the city with 1/4 taxes. Never plan ahead I guess.

[MrsDarcy]

We're at 19%. We could probably afford a little more at the moment, but probably next year will be in a better financial position and could afford more. We don't plan to move for at least two years, most likely more.

[sarapocalypse]

About 23%. Wish the percentage was a little lower, but it is just about right for us.