<prompt> Human: Dear Personal Finance,My wife and I just got hired by the same employer and our combined income will be about 200 K per year. We have been renting so far no real estate equity, but we want to move into a new house. We found one we really like for 500 K. We also have 500 K in savings, in the form of an investment it was much less until recently when it went up a lot, but weve had this investment for more than one year.It seems like we can pretty much buy the whole house in cold, hard, cash i.e., no mortgage but should we do that? How much of this house should we pay for and how much should we borrow? Also, if we liquidate all or part of our investment to pay for the house, how do taxes factor into that? sorry for the really beginner question, have been a student right up until recently and taxesexpenses were really straightforwardYour help would be greatly appreciated! EDIT: Thank you everyone for your thoughts and suggestions so far! This is really helpful. Just to clarify, the 10 return on the invested asset that I mentioned below was completely hypothetical. I have no idea what the future return on the asset I currently have is, but it is currently valued at 500 K and could be be easily converted to something else like an index fund if that made sense.  <response>: Are you ready to buy a house and stay in the area? Does the house need to be 500k, with the higher repair costs, insurance fee and taxes that come with that?If your investment recently went up a lot, it probably can go down quickly, too. I hope you didnt invest everyhing in one single company, or did you?. Personally, I would love to realize those gains, and buy the house with that money. By the way, I would keep a bit for the emergency fund, plus make sure to have all taxes paid, or enough set aside to pay them when the time comes. So maybe youll need a small mortgage after all. You can rebuild a healthy portfolio from your income easily. Having one of the basics, i.e. shelter, taken care of would be very worthwhile to me. 