How Much Percentage of Your Income Do You Devote to Housing/Rent?

[smwatson]

36% of pre-tax. About 45-50% of post-tax. Living in a 3 bed with 3 others.

#LondonLife

 

[sliceoftoast]

About 50% of my income is for rent/household stuff (groceries etc.).

Same here, I also don't have to worry about a car as i don't drive. So i have a little extra money that allows me to buy more tech toys or buy some stuff for the house

 

[macbook yes]

Rent is usually a little more than half of my income (depending on how much I worked each month). But then again, I'm a student working part time.

 

[chrono1081]

I pay literally almost 1/4 in rent. Rent/Income ratio where I live isn't very good and I'm a median earner in most places.

 

[And]

Personally, I have never found percentage guidelines that helpful, since they vary depending on the persons salary. The important thing is to work out a definitive list of outgoings in a month and compare to your incoming salary. You need to build in outgoings for all bills, insurance, internet access, food, travel, contingencies for house repairs & car repairs, general savings, etc. At the end of that process if incoming > outgoing then it works. (However you also need to calculate a 'what if' plan, what if your incoming drastically changed, in a worse case scenario went to zero? Unless you know how you can pay everything off for a year then your outgoings could be too high.)

 

[MICHAELSD]

They say it should be 25%.

 

[jkcerda]

about 40% right now.

 

[gsugolfer]

Our mortgage payment (P&I only) is 7.0% of our gross income. The escrow adds another 1.5% to make it 8.5% total.

Personally, I have never found percentage guidelines that helpful, since they vary depending on the persons salary. The important thing is to work out a definitive list of outgoings in a month and compare to your incoming salary. You need to build in outgoings for all bills, insurance, internet access, food, travel, contingencies for house repairs & car repairs, general savings, etc. At the end of that process if incoming > outgoing then it works. (However you also need to calculate a 'what if' plan, what if your incoming drastically changed, in a worse case scenario went to zero? Unless you know how you can pay everything off for a year then your outgoings could be too high.)

People tend to uses percentages for this because a high earner will very likely live in more expensive housing, though it won't be a 1:1 ratio.

 

[iBreatheApple]

About 40%. But I'm a graduate student, so hopefully that changes in the not-too-distant future.