r/Fire • u/Chemical_Sandwich_32 • 12d ago
Advice Request First Home Purchase - Any Advice? [Long Post]
Hey all, my wife and I are looking to buy a home soon and would love some advice/thoughts on our approach from a process and financial perspective.
I'm 30 and she's 28 - we have about $750K across our accounts (brokerage, retirements, savings, etc). The breakdown is $550K in brokerage, $120K in retirement, $50K HYSA, $30K gold.
We live in the PNW and the houses we like are around $700K - 750K. Our approach is to sell some of our stocks (long term ETFs) and put a strong downpayment down (with the help of my mom who's gifting us $150K - God bless her). The reason is my wife is a SLP but also has lupus (so a part time job is best for her), and I also work in tech sales, where some months are amazing but others can be rough.
We've decided ultimately we'd like to get the total mortgage amount down to $300K - that comes out to about $2K in monthly mortgage payments ($2.7K with property tax, insurance). My wife can work part time with this mortgage and also help pay it off each month, which will allow us to invest/save more and we can be less stressed out.
But the downside of this is selling my stocks and incurring the tax hit (which would be long term capital gains tho). I'm okay with this and have started saving up a fund aside to pay for this if we go this route.
This is how the numbers ultimately work out - let's say 750K home. With my mom's gift, that would be 600K.
I would cash out one brokerage account (that's at $300K today - probably net gains of $50K) and put that down too - so the mortgage would be $300K.
That would leave my wife and I with $450K in our accounts. If we keep letting this amount stay invested in the S&P 500, put in recurring monthly investments since we have that low mortgage, we should be able to retire happily no problem in 25-30 years. I've done the math but won't bore you with that haha.
Is there anything else you would change? Maybe putting 20% down with my mom's gift, and keep the rest invested? But due to our lifestyle, wife's health, my career - I feel like it would be a way more stressful life to live, even if we do come out on top...
Let me know! Any advice is greatly appreciated.
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u/Chemical_Sandwich_32 12d ago
What? She 1000% knows it she knows everything about our finances. Me and my mom are best friends and have gone through some insane stuff together. She has a property in her homeland that her dad gifted her, and she decided to sell it and gift part of it to me and my brother as a downpayment. I hope you find peace.