When I met my wife, she was in the process of buying a house through sonyma, she made just over 30,000 at the time and would BARELY be able to afford our house which only costs $600 a month (mortgage, tax, and insurance), and be able to pay her bills ($270 car payment, insurance, food, utilities) I don’t see how she could have done it. When I moved in I made about the same as her, and even with our combined income we did not have much extra cash. There is no way we would have been able to afford a $1500-2000 mortgage. Can we afford it now? Barely. We could afford the mortgage on a $100-150,000 house right now with a combined income of just under $100K. I don’t see how people pay for $200-300,000 houses with our income or even less. Ramen noodles? POS '89 Cavalier? Mounting credit card debt?