In Seattle Washington? You'd have an extremely hard time making ends meet on $75K, it certainly isn't "generous." For example median home value in Seattle is $725K.
Fixed costs per month:
* $5K mortgage
* $1.2K health insurance
* $300 life and disability insurance
* $800 utilities
* $2K home services: nanny, sitter, cleaner
* $800 school / preschool and kids activities
* $2K groceries, essentials, etc
I have a family, two small kids (4 and 2), and live a comfortable life in Seattle. I could obviously adjust my standard of living, move somewhere cheaper, etc, but I didn't want my family to have to change anything from this experiment I'm doing with my life.
If I moved into my neighborhood now it might be closer to $5k (without a bigger down payment) but I wouldn’t recommend it.
A lot of the things in your post resonated with me, but seeing this in the comments really got me curious about your math.
Good luck with your endeavor!
My mortgage interest rate is 4% and I've put the cash I've withdrawn in short term US treasures at 2.5%, so that cash is only costing me 1.5%.
Another reason I did a refinance was that when I bought my house I had only been in the US for 2.5 years and my credit score wasn't great (in the 600s IIRC). I could only get an 5/1 ARM loan that was about to start becoming variable at a higher interest rate.
Renting an 1800 sq ft 3 bedroom house is $40K/year. That leaves $35K. Per month that's almost $3000.
If you are having an "extremely hard time" paying for everything else with $3000, you may want to reevaluate your lifestyle.
I'm not saying it's a fantastic lifestyle, but it's not a poor lifestyle. You'll still be able to afford a lifestyle better than most of the country.
I suppose bare minimum essential is probably $1000/mo but if you set needle to little above middle class but way below “rich” (which is not same as median) then $3000’for “everything else” is not sufficient.
That isn’t much less than the median income in Seattle.
Why's that?