<prompt> Human: Total husband-wife income: 24k per month before tax. This is just base, dont want to take rsusbonuses into account. Should I buy a 1.2m house in Milpitas? Monthly expenses, with mortgage etc should be 10k. I am guessing will have roughly 16k per month after tax. That leaves 6k per month savings. With 401k and espp, we will have roughly 1.5k in hand. Is it worth it? No kids yet.Assistant: Rule of thumb is 3x your income. Though when you make 290k you can probably comfortably do 4x. Over 5x may be pushing it. You can make it work, but may be unhappy with your savings or recreational spending power. Human: In bay area 3x isnt possible . I am worried about reduced spending power too, but cant think of any other way either.  <response>: Rules of thumb like this dont apply to high incomehigh cost scenarios like the Bay Area. Even with very high proportions of income going straight to housing costs, the remaining proportion is still a relatively large amount of cash to live on. 