Comments on: Are We “Loaded?”

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:39:49 +0000

Kristen,

When you set up a new account in Quicken, depending on which year of the software you have, it should have a wizard to amortize that account for you. That might be a good way to see what your remaining principle is on the car.

If you don’t have a new enough version, let me know. I think I have some CD’s laying around.

By: Kristen Rudd

Kristen Rudd — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:18:38 +0000

So I looked around a little more, and it looks like lenders figure your total mortgage affordability as 28% of gross income, not one-third. Then they use a total debt ratio of 36%. So we’d actually be over for housing, but just within the total debt ratio, with the car payment.

Locked? You mean as in trapped? : )

By: lomagirl

lomagirl — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:56:21 +0000

Maybe you’re locked, but not loaded. Is that possible?
I always thought housing should be about 1/4- but we do about 1/3 too.

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:56:15 +0000

Thanks for tips on Quicken–I haven’t used it in a few years, so I’ll have to check into it again.

By: Kristen Rudd

Kristen Rudd — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:15:31 +0000

Amazingly enough, most calculators I found say your mortgage/rent should not be more than one/third of your GROSS income - and ours falls at a smidge over 32%. I’m assuming our rent will be raised to the full 2.7% this year, which should then put us right under 33% - so we still are OK as far as our rent/income ratio.

That said, this is San Francisco! I’m not sure if it’s gross or net income, but people figure to spend between 40% and 60% on housing. As of today, the median price for a house in SF is $862,804, according to this.

We got a really good deal on this place. We’re also out near the ocean - further out than we wanted to be, which factors into the price. We looked at places much more than this that weren’t near as nice (and didn’t have parking or W/D hookups or a yard!), and when I saw this place, I made Joshua leave work early that same day to see it, so we could sign the lease papers and snag it.

Perhaps we ARE crazy (I have never claimed otherwise)!

As far as Quicken, we have our credit card set up in an credit card account in Quicken. When you make transactions on the credit card, it considers them in the month you made them. So if you make charges in February, and pay it in full in March, it shows those transactions as occurring in February.

I love all the subcategories you can create and the memos you can put. I put all our medical-related stuff under “Doctor” and then subcategorize out, “Chiropractor,” “Prescriptions,” “Pediatric,” “Dental,” and so on.

I’d like to put our car loan in there, but I’m not quite sure how. Maybe I’ll figure that out.

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:00:14 +0000

I was really surprised by the average salary in CA–I thought it would be much more than that in comparison to Dallas. Your cost of living is about 50% higher (or more) than ours, but your paychecks are only about 21% higher. That just further convinces me that anyone who lives in CA is crazy. (Just kidding–we love CA and honeymooned there.)

You might be spending too much on rent, but that may be all that’s available that’s big enough for all of you and safe, since I have no idea what the market is like there. IMO rent/mortgage plus insurance should be about 35% or less of take-home pay, but I know that most Americans spend more than that.

I need to do a better job in keeping tabs on where all of our money is going. I’ve gotten lazy at that. I may give Quicken another try. In the past I got frustrated with it because it was too much work to allocate expenses that were placed on a credit card (does it go on the expenses for the month the charge was made? or the month that it’s actually paid??). We pay off our credit card in full at the end of the month, but I like to use it to get the rewards (it’s an Amazon card).