[USER]

Hoping for some advice, but also venting.

I am in my 40’s and finally got an adult job last year where I earned enough to set up a retirement account and even max out my 401k and Roth. Thankfully the job allowed my husband and myself to start saving for a down payment and the retirement contributions helped decrease our taxes (my income: $115k, joint: $250k).

But as we search for a house ($450k budget), we’re realizing that with the crazy market, it’ll have to be a townhouse instead and we need to be saving even more. I’m seriously considering pausing all retirement contributions for a year to save up, but not looking forward to having to pay more taxes.

What are your thoughts? Pros and cons? Please, no rude comments.

[Eric]

Nimbys and gov red tape are not going away anytime soon so assume house prices will continue to go up. Buy what you can as soon as you can and sell when you have equity. Rinse and repeat until you get into what you want. It isn’t cheap to buy/sell a few times but what’s that saying? Gotta spend money to make money.

You can check also: How much of a hit would I take if I took money out of non retirement mutual fund to pay down debt?

[Adam]

House on pause. Prioritize retirement and figure out how much you need to retire someday and calculate how much that means saving per month.

[Stephanie]

I stopped all retirement contributions for 6 yrs when I started my own business…I am now really regretting it. Wishing I would have taken a side hustle job so I could, at least, max out my Roth. Trying to play catch up now but, with the way I invest (super aggressive) I would easily have $100k+ more than I have now.

[Sarah]

I’d do the opposite. Save and invest more and put the house idea on pause. Housing will always exist, time is not on your side for investing/saving for retirement.

[Michael]

I would assume that you’re late to the retirement savings program from your post. I would not pause or stop that in any way. Real estate is nice to have, but there are a lot of retirees with nice homes and no cash- not an enviable position to be in.

[Bill]

Step 1 would be to get a master plan. If your husband was making $135k, you guys should have already been setting up retirement accounts with just that income. That is nearly double what an average household earns, so if you weren’t saving a big chunk of that, you want to hit pause and figure out why. If you get your spending into the range of an average US household eg $60-70k, and earn $250k, you will have a massive amount of cash flow and easily be able to afford whatever house you want. It would only take you a couple months to save up 10%.

[Marty]

It sounds like it would be best for you to pause on the house and keep saving for retirement as you seem to have started late.

[Author]

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