Any one of you made a plan to save for your home’s down payment? My SO and I have to just start with this process and your experience and lessons learnt will help us plan and achieve our goal efficiently.

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I lived at home my first 2.5 years out of undergrad and helped me save a ton for a down payment. I’ll just say to keep in mind you don’t need 20% down. Sometimes it takes forever to save for 20% down. Even with rates starting to go up a bit, you can still get a good rate + PMI. Try to figure out what you would be comfortable paying on a monthly basis when you look at your income and monthly debt and living expenses . Keep HOA in mind if you are buying a condo or something - that can change your purchase price quite a bit. Once you figure out what you would be comfortable paying you can figure out what ballpark home price you can shop for. I did 10% down for my first place and glad I did because I was able to keep an emergency savings and buy a ton of furniture since I didn’t have much besides a bed lol I ended up just doing a high yield savings account and updating my payroll setup to automatically put 40% of my paycheck to that account and it helped me save up pretty quickly. You just have to figure out when you plan on buying to figure out how much time it will take to save for that purchase price. Don’t forget to account for closing costs! Best of luck ☺️ buying a home is exciting! Have fun with it!

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Of course! No problem. I just used different websites that have those free calculators to see how much house I could afford once I figured out how much I had to budget for other monthly expenses. A lot of times people say to go based off of your gross income, but I did the math using my take home pay to see what I would actually be comfortable spending on my home each month. The banks are going to say you can afford a $500k home but you would be what’s called “house poor” when you should actually be shopping for a home around $350K (as an example). I would first try to do the math to see how much you bring home after taxes, retirement contributions and healthcare premiums to see what you are left with. Once you have that you can use those online calculators to see what home you could afford at that monthly cost. It will depend a lot if you have a high HOA or buy in an area with high taxes. You’ll notice that once you have a target home price (let’s call it $300-$350k) that the bank will probably quote you a much higher number. Just keep in mind that they don’t care if that makes you go paycheck to paycheck trying to pay for the home. Once you have a number/range that makes sense to you, then you can reach out to a lender once you are ready to buy so that you can pre approved. Your real estate agent should also be able to walk you through this!

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