As someone who wants to be financially independent, how did you make so much such that household income > mortgage? Do u just live in a crappy neighborhood? Even on Midwest states tech yearly salary is about half of a decent house?
Basically we got lucky. We bought our house 7 years ago, just before the housing bubble went crazy again. I live in the SF Bay Area to be honest we almost gave up and went back to renting but managed to find a house just before we gave up.
My wife makes 50% more than me, but we bought a house that we could afford on one salary. It’s in a nice neighborhood but not super fancy. It’s the house I plan on dying in. We have lived well below our means and was able to save a good down payment that helped. Not living above your means and maintaining a standard of living well below that is the most important thing, in my opinion. Not having worked for FANG (not being able to get in because I’m not good enough to pass the interviews) and not being able to amass great wealth from stocks, basically it’s been from saving.
My wife is more successful than I am, but I stunted my career to take more of the child rearing. That said my career isn’t terrible, I make a good salary but I turn off my phone at 3pm every day. My calendar automatically rejects all meeting requests after 230pm and I pick up the kids and spend more time with them to give my wife the opportunity to further her career.
No we haven’t. Our decision is to pay off the mortgage as slowly as possible. The interest rate on the mortgage is 3.5% so if inflation rises significantly, we will be paying negative real interest rates for much of the duration of the mortgage.
Historically inflation is approximately 3% on average, also, re-financing your mortgage could be very advantageous for you, the lowest rates you can find right now hover around 1.7%.
