Question on housing affordability – am I house poor? Is this the new norm?
I’m 32.
Gross pay 107,500K. BUT my annual take home pay (after taxes + deductions, etc.) is about $75K-ish. The only debt I have is my mortgage. I pay my credit cards off each month. My car is paid off. No student loans.
I also did score a nice tax refund this year totaling $5,183 which includes fed, state, and property tax refund. So that was awesome.
Currently I have – $127K in retirement accounts. My personal Roth IRA has 84K. I have been unable to contribute more than 1-1.5K per year to my personal Roth since buying the house and adopting a dog who needs a lot of medical stuff. Through work I have 43K (I can only contribute 8% – 5% to traditional pre tax and 3% to Roth).
Liquidity wise.. I have 8.8K in an HYSA and contribute $250/month. However, I pull from this account when I need to.. like paying for furnace or AC repairs or big random expenses. I’ve got around 4.8K in checking and $650 in savings.
My HOA fee keeps climbing. My interest rate is 5.875 (refinanced Jan of 2026) and I have about 87K in equity in my home which I bought at 330K and 7.1% interest rate in 2023. Dropped my monthly mortgage amount by $190 only lol.
My house has dropped in worth by about… 9K since I bought it.
I’m not sure if this is just becoming the norm by my mortgage and HOA eat up ~36% of my take home every month. My HOA jumped up $320 in total since buying the place. It’s supposed to be $520 but the HOA management company didn’t realize they didn’t finish paying off a loan they got (before I moved in!!) and so for the next 2 years we all have to pay $720 to get that paid off and also get necessary repairs.
I’m feeling like a stupid 32 year old by following my parents advice that buying is always smarter than renting. My housing expenses have literally doubled.
I’m not living paycheck to paycheck. I just was reading some articles that I am very behind with savings and am freaking out.
Im a therapist and am literally seeing as many clients as I can to get those quarterly bonuses while also trying to still have a life to see friends a couple times per month and spend time with my family and dog.
Am I totally screwed?
Am I House Poor Or Is This Just The New Normal?
byu/Ego_Dying inpersonalfinance
Posted by Ego_Dying
4 Comments
It doesn’t look like you’re house poor or “totally screwed” at all.
To try and put numbers to this instead of percentages (and let me know if I did any of my math incorrectly), your mortgage/HOA are around $2250 a month. After taxes, you make $6250 a month. I will note that I’m ignoring the tax refund here, although if you change up your withholdings, you can turn that tax refund into an extra $430 per month in your paycheck. But I’ll leave that out.
The rule I’ve always seen is to try and keep your housing costs under 30% of your gross pay. Seems like you’re right around 25%, so that looks good. You’re also in a great spot for retirement savings.
What do your other expenses look like? You have $4,000 after mortgage/HOA, taxes, and deductions (does that include retirement deductions?). How much of that do you put into savings each month?
Honestly it sounds like you’re doing fine? Your emergency fund is low but you could get that up to a good level quickly. You should have 6-12 months of expenses in your HYSA.
Your tax refund means that you lent the govt about $400 a month. So start by adjusting your W9 to fix that. You could also lower your retirement contributions for a few months to help build up your emergency fund.
you’re more than fine I think. I mean the HOA thing sucks yes but you took that risk when you bought in on an HOA.
what is your total payment incl tax insurance HOA?
Nothing you described puts you anywhere close to _poor_.