While thinking about how much % of take home pay is our food budgets, I was wondering how much are most people's housing budget? What should it be? I was thinking that 25% was a good number.

Ours is 33%, or 1/3, and that is our mortgage payment P&I, home insurance, property taxes, electric bill($80), telephone($40).

 I did not include gas because we heat with (free) wood and our gas only gets filled every 4 years or so for our range and limited dryer usage.

We spend about 13% of my husband's take home pay to utilities. It breaks down in the following amounts.

•   $20- garbage
• $240- propane and electricity
• $119- phone
• $60- water
  

Total: $439 a month

 We have considered housing before and realised we'd be looking at about 35% of his income just for the note, insurance and taxes. Added together, we could be looking at 48% going to housing!

Kabin, do you know if they mean just the house or the utilities as well when they print that number?

Thank you.

We pay $1366 for our first mortgage, $500 for home equity, combined with utilities it is 49% of take home pay, less % if you take the gross pay- our heat is high. I was feeling a little house poor, but have started carrying half the mortgage every paycheck- then I can pay the rest of my bills on time.  Used to be I'd pay the mortgage and wait forever to have $ to pay the other bills!

I am going to try to pay off home equity after we pay off our credit cards, but it is slooooow going!

Tracy
 

imho

Mortgage, taxes, insurance should be 25% of take home pay

Electric, heat, phone, cable, satellite, ISP are seperate budgeted expenses, not your housing

Finding a home that fits into the 25% range is hard. With utilities, that's just too high.