<prompt> Human: I live in a city with quite expensive housing. I want a nice house in a nice area thats near to where it works with enough bedrooms for my family to live comfortably. The thing is, I do pretty well and at least in theory can totally afford it. But its a huge amount of money and Im totally freaking out. Please tell me whether its stupid to buy myself into being house poor.The deets: Ive got a 50,000 emergency fund that Im not going to touch. Only debt is my car payment. Ive doing just great on retirement savings in 401ks and IRAs. In order to put 20 down and pay the closing costs, I wont have to touch the emergency fund, the kids college savings account, or the retirement money, but I will have to spend literally everything else. Ill have about 87 left of non-tagged money.The mortgage payment is pretty much half my base income, and the other half will absolutely get spent each year minus retirement college savings with nothing left for vacations and such. Thing is, I have one of those jobs with a fairly unreliable set of stock options and bonuses. I should net on average an extra 50,000 per year but its highly unreliable.Also, the house needs work. Not a LOT of work, but were pretty sure that well more or less end up sinking years of savings into improving it add a bathroom upstairs, redo the kitchen, finish the basement with a bedroom and bathroom, build a deck. The total improvements we might do on it could run a quarter of a million dollars.Are we crazy for buying this house? Because Im kind of freaking out right now. This is basically all of my money. The bank assured me that Im nowhere near risky territory, and the rent vs. buy calculator is screaming buy, but I cant help but feel like I could buy an ugly house far away from work for half the money and, you know, NOT spend my life savings on a house. Then again, I dont want my kids to grow up in an ugly house and never see me because Im commuting. Then again, my kids will appreciate it if I can fly them to Hawaii occasionally. Then again...  <response>: If youve got a bad feeling about it, which it seems like you do, its probably not a good idea. I dont see how spending half your income on your mortgage payment for a house that needs a ton of work is a good idea, personally. 