Like most people on an Easter long weekend, I calculated my net worth on Saturday. I find that as you get older, you should really find out how much you’re worth every once in a while. I wish I could say that I somehow discovered I was worth a million dollars but that wasn’t what happened.
While I wound up with a figure slightly larger than I had expected, the real reason I did the calculations was to find out what kind of mortgage I could wind up with. I wanted to know the largest amount of money that a bank/mobster would be stupid enough to give me.
Based on some really rough calculations and some online investigating, I found out that ING Direct would allow me to buy a home worth $315 000. My monthly mortgage payments would be $1608. CIBC was even more generous, allowing to me buy a home valued at $327 000. The mortgage payments here would be $1688 monthly.
For the moment, let’s not dwell on what kind of home $315 000 and $327 000 would buy me. Let’s think about my mortgage payments. $1600 to $1700 is a lot of money per month to be paying just to cover a mortgage. For a single dude like myself, that’s essentially half a paycheque gone immediately towards housing. Is that reasonable?
Of course, there’s nothing to say that I have to spend everything cent I could borrow. What if my desired home was only $250 000? Then my mortgage payments would be lower. I guess the next steps would be to find out what $250 000 to $350 000 buys me and where that is.
Hold on, because Daddy might be getting into some more debt!