Post # 1
Member
101 posts
Blushing bee
House-poor is probably not the wisest route to go in many ppl’s opinion. But sometimes life’s situation just put us in this position.
We need to move and we have a good amount of down payment saved up. So we voluntarily and knowingly step into this house-poor situation. With an emergency fund put aside, the monthly income vs output is very tight because hub only has a part-time now. Anything luxury, such as flying for vacation will NOT happen. We need to buy a lot of household stuff + furniture, but I am looking basically at craigslist/ikea/furniture outlet/salvation army WITH STYLE. 😉 haha I am pretty good with couponing, but I will look into some extreme couponing once things are settled. I told myself, nice dining out will only be granted if there’s a groupon.
It’s hard sometimes, especially all my friends are taking turn to go on vacation like every other week. But I just tell myself we already have more than what we need, AND we are having our home! I just pray that our income vs output net each month so we can continue to make offering and support our worldvision ‘daughter’.
Are you house poor? How long have you been in the situation? how do u get by/or live contently in the situation?
Post # 3
Member
3373 posts
Sugar bee
I’m kind of confused about the house poor thing. Don’t you mean house rich, money poor?
My mortgage company wouldn’t let our monthly payment go above 30%, so how can the house be such a large portion of your income?
Post # 4
Member
3569 posts
Sugar bee
house poor means you spend most of your income on your house, so you don’t have a lot left over.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/housepoor.asp#axzz1XCVoJ63f –
Post # 5
Member
2154 posts
Buzzing bee
Heh – we’re rentpoor, I guess!
Post # 6
Member
7429 posts
Busy Beekeeper
At this point, we are, but I hope by the new years things won’t be this way anymore
@PinkMagnolia: I’m not sure how all companies work, but ours was about 40% of our income at the time, which has changed. As long as we could afford our bills and the mortgage, and had good credit, they let us. We actually qualified for about $80k more than what we could afford!! But, i think that had to do with our great credit and the fact that I was still in school and didn’t have to put student loan repayment in the equation
Post # 7
Member
101 posts
Blushing bee
@PinkMagnolia: My mortgage is not big but my monthly income is not big either. So even mortgage is less than 30% of my monthly pretax income, with condo assessement and prop tax accrual, we don’t have much left for daily stuff.
@MrsTVLover: yup! thank you!