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> We could afford our expenses on two minimum wage jobs if need be. And that's with 3 kids.

Let's assume a $15 minimum wage. The housing one can afford on two such wages is $1,560/mo. On a $700k home, assuming 20% down, to repay the principal alone is $1,556/mo. A mortgage calculator says $3,800/mo once you have interest in there — or 73% of your gross income. And that ignores insurance & taxes. And those 3 kids.

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I imagine that the OP probably has savings to fall back on (since they stress financial security), and more equity in the home than just the downpayment— not to mention that if they bought it not so recently (5-10 years back), the home value appreciation has likely been insane to still come out well ahead in even an 2008-esque crash, plus they could have refinanced at 2% fixed 30year rates in 2020-2021 drastically lowing their monthly payments even further, depending on how much equity they had.

Also, California just passed a law requiring minimum wage be $22 in some industries/companies of a certain size (and the next step will likely be rolling that out to all industries and companies, as they did with the $15 minimum wage between 2016-2020)

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