<prompt> Human: My boyfriend and I are thinking about eventually getting married and buying a house together. Real estate where we are isnt cheap, rent or buy.Right now, the both of us have total 120k in savinginvestment. Our total take home is 9500month. We currently rent a small condo at 1600month all inclusive. My monthly car payment is 350 and his is 600. We have no debts and our monthly combined expenses including grocery and entertainment is maximum 1k. My boyfriend has done the calculation, but basically to avoid paying high interest, we would like to put a 20 downpayment on any property we buy. Right now our max. budget is a house thats 500k, which would make our downpayment 100k. If we are being liberal with closing costs, moving costs, furnishing costs, etc, we can throw out another 5k. To be honest, where we are, a 500k budget gets you pretty much nowhere. With that budget, you are either looking at a condotownhouse in a reasonable neighbourhood with a monthly management fee of 300500 alone. Or you can go out of the city for 2 hours drive. We need to stay in the city for work, and ideally we would like a property with minimum monthly fees. If we just up our budget to 600k, it expands our options tremendously. But that would mean our downpayment is 120k, which is all of our savings right now. I personally dont feel comfortable with no savings at all. Whats a good ratio of saving to maintain vs how much to put into a property? All the while assuming maintaining a 2500 monthly mortgage payment?p.s. there is and will be no children in this picture.  <response>: 5K sounds very low for closing costs. Talk to a lender maybe just your credit union for now and get realistic numbers for closing costs, taxes, etc. In my area, for a 500K house its 14K, then theres moving and house expenses. For 600K its 16K. Im counting on 20K total, for closingmoving costs.Are you getting married? Buying property together, when youre not married, comes with a whole set of potential legal issues. Talk to a lawyer if you plan to do this unmarried to make sure youre both as protected as possible.My calculations for mortgage say itll be 2500 for a 500K house, but 3000 for a 600K house. Also plan for maintenance at 10 of the mortgage.Total in cash before closing: 20 down payment 120K 6 month e-fund of new house payment costs 5K6 30K realistic closingmoving costs 20KTotal: 170K 