Five years ago we built a house with expectation of raising a family. Unfortunately, since that time, my wife has suffered a back injury resulting in two major surgeries, constant meds and chronic, debilitating pain. It’s really starting to affect her wellbeing and mental health. We’re both mid thirties so working like this for 30 more years is not tenable.
Unfortunately we do need her income to afford the house so I’m starting to consider downsizing and what it would look like. Here are the details:
My salary: 120k (plus 5-10% bonus)
Her salary: 95k base (OT pushes this anywhere to 120-150k)
Mortgage: fifth year in at 2.75% – 475k remains – 3k monthly total with PMI,tax etc
Ballpark value: 900-1M
Student loans: 55k
New home price: 450-550k @ 6.5%? 30yr
My thinking is if we sell we can pay off student loans and put the remainder toward a new, smaller house and cut our mortgage by more than half. If that’s the case, we could get by with her changing jobs and working part time. This would be a huge quality of life improvement and get us out of what’s starting to feel like being trapped by a mortgage.
It would be a bit of a lifestyle adjustment but my no means we moving into a trailer (nothing wrong with that) it will just be a 2-2500sqft, older home.
Anyone see any issues with this? Is there another alternative here?
Edit: only other major items we have monthly
Is 1100$ in car payments. The rest are typical bills: food, car insurance, gas, electric, etc etc
Seeking advice. Downsizing due to health issues.
byu/Pale_Performer_2024 inpersonalfinance
Posted by Pale_Performer_2024
2 Comments
First off so sorry to hear about your wife. Ppl have no idea how debilitating chronic pain is and chronic back pain is horrible.
It sounds like a good plan especially if you can sell your current home for the estimate you have.
You should look for an accessible home. Other than that, your plan is sound, if wife is on board. I hope you have talked about this already, this is what you two came up with together, and now you are just figuring out how to make it work, rather than you are going to present this plan to your wife.