We are going to buy a house. It is not the most financially wise decision, but life isn’t about always being financially wise–sometimes you have to splurge (within reason) and take risks. I accept that buying a house will reduce our total networth in the future, and I’m ok with that. After all, what is the point of making money if you can’t enjoy it, and what would I enjoy more than having a home of my own to raise my kids in? Sure I’d love to take lots of international trips and such, but with a toddler and one on the way (and maybe one more in 2-3 years), that’s not happening for a while. My house will be my Paris and Prague and Tokyo.
But one thing has been very difficult to figure out — how much we can afford. All home buying calculators assume you have a fairly consistent income that goes up by a consistent percentage every year. That isn’t reality for us. There are many ways to figure out how much you can afford, but one model that I’ve decided I like is 28% of pre-tax income (I’d prefer to do post-tax but if I do that I’ll never afford a home here.)
I worked out the chart below, which shows potential annual income (pre tax) with the amount of mortgage (PITI total) we can afford per month (on the right) and then on the let, I have the house price and the total amount of PITI with a 3.5% 30 year fixed loan. Our goal would be to afford a $1.7M home with an in-law, where my father-in-law would pay some rent. This means based on the chart below we need to make $320,000 per year, consistently, to afford a home at this price point. (*my insurance estimates are probably way off but I tried to figure out what home insurance would cost in California with earthquake insurance tacked on — if these numbers look wrong please let me know in a comment.)
| Total Year | Total Month | Mortgage Max (28%) | Total Monthly | House Price | Mortgage (3.5) | Taxes | Insurance | Earthquake | |
| $210,000 | $17,500 | $4,900 | $4,872 | $1,000,000 | $3,412 | $933 | $167 | $360 | |
| $255,000 | $21,250 | $5,950 | $5,957 | $1,200,000 | $4,310 | $1,120 | $167 | $360 | |
| $300,000 | $25,000 | $7,000 | $6,862 | $1,400,000 | $5,029 | $1,307 | $167 | $360 | |
| $320,000 | $26,667 | $7,467 | $7,767 | $1,600,000 | $5,747 | $1,493 | $167 | $360 | |
| $400,000 | $33,333 | $9,333 | $9,936 | $2,000,000 | $7,543 | $1,867 | $167 | $360 | |
| $500,000 | $41,667 | $11,667 | $11,381 | $2,200,000 | $8,801 | $2,053 | $167 | $360 |
Right now, I’m earning $170,000 in base income, and my husband makes $85,000. Based on our minimum income, that gets us to $1.2M of house… which isn’t enough here. To get to that $1.6M target (which is still a small house and a fixer upper), we need $320k in annual income. So either I need to consistently make $235k, or my husband needs to increase his income, or some combination of both.
What the above does not account for is that my annual bonus is $34,000. I have no idea if I will get a bonus this year or how much of it I will get. I have received my full bonus every year for the past 3 years BUT there is no guarantee I will receive a bonus in the future, or that future jobs will pay such a sizable amount in bonus. I’m not sure if I should include my bonus in my calculations or not. I’d rather not, because a bonus is nice to have for an extra vacation or gift for the kids vs worked into our planned home expenses. It would be nice if my base was $200k, so I could actually include that in the calculations. If I could get my base to $200k and my husband could figure out how to make $120k, we’d be in pretty good shape.
In addition to the base and bonus, I also receive a large amount of my income in RSUs. My refreshes have not been great, though. And if I lose my job, then I will not be able to obtain the same amount in RSU.
When I joined my company, my total compensation was as follows:
- $165k (base)
- $33 (bonus)
- $56k (RSU/yr for 4 years) (*currently worth ~$350k+/yr)
- TOTAL = ~$254k
My current compensation once I fully vest my first grant is:
- $170k (base)
- $34k (bonus)
- $12k (RSU/yr)
- TOTAL = $216k
So, that’s good, with bonus and RSU I’m still getting close to the $235k I need to make to afford a $1.6M home, but not quite, and that’s including bonus and RSU which are all variable.
What’s scarier is that if I lose this job, I have no idea if I will be able to do better than $150k salary with no bonus or RSU (I feel fairly confident I can find a job with $150k salary since before I started this job I had a few offers for that amount at startups that I turned down as they were way too low.) So do I base my home purchase off of $150k (me) + $85k (husband) = $235k/yr of income? Then we a afford a $1M house… so we can’t afford any house here and we’ll just continue renting. However, with my RSU growth, my income this year and next year are very high, and it “feels” like I should be able to afford more house. But can I?
