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If you're not going to say that affordability is roughly 3x rent, then you shouldn't be using gross pay, you should be itemizing. "Roughly 3 times" always seems to be a fudge so you can use gross pay instead of analyzing everyone's taxes and number of mouths to feed - and results in a rough estimate of affordability.

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The problem with the 3x approximation is that other expenses don't really scale with rent. If you spend $1000/month on food and $2000/month on rent, and then move to a $3000/month apartment, your food cost isn't going to change to $1500. Sure, the local grocery stores and restaurants might be a little more expensive, but not much.

And $1000/m for food is actually really high. That's if you eat lunch and dinner at restaurants every day and don't worry about the price. Figure $500 for food, $500 for health insurance, $150 for transit... it's not adding up to twice rent.

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