Thanks all, for the responses and warm welcome. Answers to questions so far and a few points of clarification:
Our current location is exactly where we want to be geographically - great school district and convenient location, however yes, we feel the size of our house will be prohibitive going forward. We have kicked around the idea of an addition but with the way the house is built (split level), we feel it would be very challenging and costly to address the bedroom space needs and our wish for a larger kitchen. I suppose getting a few estimates would not be a bad idea, just to say we have thoroughly explored this avenue.
Partner #1 will be vested and be slated to receive SOME form of pension upon completing about 1.5 more years of service. In order to receive full benefits, Partner #1 would need to work this job for another 28 years, barring changes to the state retirement system (which are possible).
One additional point of clarification, which, this is my fault for wording it poorly in the original post: If we were to do this plan, we would probably do minimal retirement deferrals (not just pre-tax as I originally stated, but overall) for this next period of time (say 12-18 months), to save additional funds for a down payment. And then obviously we would not be deferring nearly as much to tax-advantaged accounts when we are in the daycare years unless there did happen to be a major increase in income. The past few years we have maxed out a 403(b), 401(k), and two Roth IRA's. Yes, we would be using some of the funds in the taxable account for down payment as well.
The city we live in is considered low to medium COL on the whole. We live in the #1 or #2 most desirable suburb / town in the greater surrounding area, and we would plan to only target a home in our current town or one other adjacent town. I am trying to be as transparent as possible on here while remaining anonymous. Likely anyone that lives in our area would be able to tell which two towns I am talking about.
$550K to $600K in the areas we are looking would probably get us a 2,200 to 2,600 sq foot house with 4 beds / 3 baths, preferably with a finished basement and ~.5 acres - give our take. Property taxes would probably be $13K - $15K and I figured $3K to $4K for insurance annually. Yes, if we wanted to live 45 minutes from our actual city, $600K could buy a TON of house but that's not our aspiration.
Due to the competitive real estate market, we likely would avoid buying contingent and sell our house after purchasing the new one, to make our offer(s) as competitive as possible. Thus, my comment about recasting proceeds from the sale into the new mortgage after the fact. We would hope to maintain $50K to $60K in accessible savings post-purchase. However, in reading some of the replies, I do see the benefit of maintaining more liquidity and exchanging that for a higher mortgage payment.
Lastly, in the immediate, the car is more of a want but we do feel there is a non-zero chance one of our cars becomes quite a bit costlier to maintain in the next couple of years. It would also be nice (again, a want) to have one slightly larger car than our current state, but not an emergency.
To be clear, everything I'm mentioning in these posts is more of a 'want' than an immediate 'need'. If absolutely necessary we could continue to live in our current house longer term, but we do want to consider our options and not just live to fund our retirement accounts.
Our current location is exactly where we want to be geographically - great school district and convenient location, however yes, we feel the size of our house will be prohibitive going forward. We have kicked around the idea of an addition but with the way the house is built (split level), we feel it would be very challenging and costly to address the bedroom space needs and our wish for a larger kitchen. I suppose getting a few estimates would not be a bad idea, just to say we have thoroughly explored this avenue.
Partner #1 will be vested and be slated to receive SOME form of pension upon completing about 1.5 more years of service. In order to receive full benefits, Partner #1 would need to work this job for another 28 years, barring changes to the state retirement system (which are possible).
One additional point of clarification, which, this is my fault for wording it poorly in the original post: If we were to do this plan, we would probably do minimal retirement deferrals (not just pre-tax as I originally stated, but overall) for this next period of time (say 12-18 months), to save additional funds for a down payment. And then obviously we would not be deferring nearly as much to tax-advantaged accounts when we are in the daycare years unless there did happen to be a major increase in income. The past few years we have maxed out a 403(b), 401(k), and two Roth IRA's. Yes, we would be using some of the funds in the taxable account for down payment as well.
The city we live in is considered low to medium COL on the whole. We live in the #1 or #2 most desirable suburb / town in the greater surrounding area, and we would plan to only target a home in our current town or one other adjacent town. I am trying to be as transparent as possible on here while remaining anonymous. Likely anyone that lives in our area would be able to tell which two towns I am talking about.
$550K to $600K in the areas we are looking would probably get us a 2,200 to 2,600 sq foot house with 4 beds / 3 baths, preferably with a finished basement and ~.5 acres - give our take. Property taxes would probably be $13K - $15K and I figured $3K to $4K for insurance annually. Yes, if we wanted to live 45 minutes from our actual city, $600K could buy a TON of house but that's not our aspiration.
Due to the competitive real estate market, we likely would avoid buying contingent and sell our house after purchasing the new one, to make our offer(s) as competitive as possible. Thus, my comment about recasting proceeds from the sale into the new mortgage after the fact. We would hope to maintain $50K to $60K in accessible savings post-purchase. However, in reading some of the replies, I do see the benefit of maintaining more liquidity and exchanging that for a higher mortgage payment.
Lastly, in the immediate, the car is more of a want but we do feel there is a non-zero chance one of our cars becomes quite a bit costlier to maintain in the next couple of years. It would also be nice (again, a want) to have one slightly larger car than our current state, but not an emergency.
To be clear, everything I'm mentioning in these posts is more of a 'want' than an immediate 'need'. If absolutely necessary we could continue to live in our current house longer term, but we do want to consider our options and not just live to fund our retirement accounts.
Statistics: Posted by AJ_ziti_467 — Fri Dec 26, 2025 7:01 am — Replies 7 — Views 863