What percentage?

What percentage of your income is your house payment?

I'm doing some serious number crunching up in here, up in here.

 

You talking gross or net?

 

That's a toughy. With GOOD credit, Fannie Mae will allow a bit OVER 50% of household income (or whoever's on the loan) to be used for debt. This is GROSS income. Seems pretty nuts, but they do. This includes anything on the credit report plus child support, alimony, and 401k loans.

 

That's stupid. I was thinking around 30% would be the max.

 

Agree. Way too high. I'd say MOST people I see are in the mid 30's. Once again, this is TOTAL debt.

 

My house payment is a little over 15% of my take-home income. Total debt is 22% of my take-home income (basically one last car payment that I should knock out sometime this summer). Before starting Ramsey's plan, debt was more like 45% of my take-home.

 

Exhibit A for why we're in the mess we are. 401k loans should not even be considered as income. Anything you have to pay back is debt, regardless whether it belongs to you or not.

Gross D/I with good credit should not be more than 40%. You also want to look at your net disposable, which is your net income minus any debts including mortgage payments. You should have at least 600-700 for yourself and 200-300 for each additional family member.

 

Read my post again. 401k loan payments count AGAINST you.

Also, if you are young with no children...you're in a different spot than someone 38 with 2+ kids.

Actually, we are planning to move soon. Our NEW payment will be about 18% of our gross income. If we didn't have kids, I'd feel very comfortable going higher than that.

 

Mine is 24% of my take home pay. !3% of my gross pay.

This doesn't count my wife's paycheck.

 

26%, roughly. It all depends. I'm not very good with money, I usually leave that stuff to my wife.