Should I Buy New House? (Sugar Land: for rent, day care, student loans)

[Lowexpectations]

How's your retirement plan coming along? How much do you save annually towards it?

[houstonbuyer14]

I max out my 401k with my company

[houstonbuyer14]

my current house has 2400 square feet vs 3500 on the proposed house, the price difference would be 150k

[houstonbuyer14]

i plan to buy in cypress

[Hangster]

I see these types of questions on here and it always amuses me. If you don't know enough about your own finances and personal situation to decide whether or not you should buy a new house, why would you even think to expect strangers on an internet forum to know better?

If you need advice that bad, the best advice you can get is to seek a professional financial planner to fully review your finances and help you decide.

It amazes me the thought process of some of these posts..

[aero100]

2400 too small? For two people? I've got a family of four (kids are 2 years and 5 months) in 1500 square feet. Yeah - we'll need something bigger eventually (probably something like....2400 square feet) but this works for our current situation and I like living in town.

If you are thinking about having kids - I'd instead pile up money. Lots of it. A 350K house on your income is certainly within your means but once you add child care in (I hear it's $800 a month on the low side, my wife stays at home so others may have better data) and the other bills there isn't much margin for things that just come up. Like a medical problem or needing a special school that might exceed $20K a year. I'm probably going to top $15K out of pocket this year on medical expenses that "just happened" with my youngest. I have good insurance and he had what I would characterize as minor issues surrounding his birth but it sure cost a lot. Judging by my friends it's not terribly unusual to run into a $10,000 problem with a kid.

Get through toddler stages and then you will have a better idea of how much free money you have. But I will promise you, kids will drain your wallet and you should build up a reserve fund to handle them.

I also would not rent unless you really want to be a landlord and are thinking of doing that sort of thing long term. If you buy a 350K house you will likely be depending on your old one to be rented to balance your cash flow - you need to assume some level of vacancy and possibly repair costs as well. If a few months of vacancy will break you financially - don't rent it. If you have a pile of cash lying around to help mitigate the risk and the rental income is substantially above what it costs to maintain the mortgage and the house...then maybe I'd be more supportive of rental.

It sounds like you really haven't done landlording before - if you go over to the "renting" section of the real estate forum on CityData you will see many, many nightmare stories of novice landlords in situations similar to you getting burned. Read that forum for awhile before jumping into being a landlord.

[Lbjen]

When I had my family of four in a 1,000 sq ft home - sure, we needed more room. We have 3,000 sq ft now and it's way too much. Unless you are certain you don't like your current zoned schools, I'd stay in the cheaper house until you genuinely do outgrow it, i.e. not enough bedrooms for number of kids. I would try living with what you think the expense of a new home would be, on only one of your incomes, for a while, and then decide.

[DSL_PWR]

I'd say do it, you only live once.

[TexasTony]

Originally Posted by Hangster

I see these types of questions on here and it always amuses me. If you don't know enough about your own finances and personal situation to decide whether or not you should buy a new house, why would you even think to expect strangers on an internet forum to know better?

If you need advice that bad, the best advice you can get is to seek a professional financial planner to fully review your finances and help you decide.

.

I agree & I think people have already made up their mind about what they are going to do and they are just trying to justify it by checking opinions here. I don't think the feedback received on online forum would be a driving factor for making such a big decision of buying a house.

[dd1153]

I would say do it as well. Right now is the time to buy up. Don't look back on this post in 2020 when rates are at 10% and you can only afford $225k. Take advantage of low rates and lock it down. Cypress is booming.