<prompt> Human: I live in the Bay Area, where 1.6M wont get you a mansion, but might get you a reasonable home to raise kids some day. When I moved here 3 years ago, I assumed I would have to win the startup lottery to ever be a home-owner. But now Im wondering what my financial position would need to look like to warrant buying a 1.6M house with savings and W2 income alone.Im married with no kids. We are both in our early 30s, and might start thinking of kids in a few years. I gross 225k base and have non-guaranteed bonuses of 80k. My spouse grosses 130k and likely wont earn any significant bonuses. We rent a 1-bedroom apartment now for 2k, and dont have any big expenses beyond our 400 monthly payments for our two leased vehicles. No credit card or student loan debt. A large chunk of our food expenses are covered by our companies, as well as things like phone bills, and gym memberships. We have 160k in cash and liquid assets and strong credit. I think we can sock away 200k more by the end of 2016 - which would technically put us above the 20 down. But spending all of our savings and taking out a 1.3M loan sounds incredibly irresponsible. So I guess the basic question is, at what point, if ever, do you have enough savings a high enough income that it would no longer be irresponsible to buy a 1.6M house?  <response>: This is hard to give a black white answer because it involves a lot of speculation. FWIW, I live in a similarly expensive part of California so faced the same question a few years ago.- First, ask yourself why you want to buy. If its because you view it as an investment, almost everyone but your real estate agent is going to disabuse you of that notion. Youre almost certainly going to be able to do better putting that money elsewhere. - If youre worried that youre throwing away money on rent, keep in mind when you own you similarly throw away money on a house -- through property taxes, HOA, maintenance so on. For example, I pay 1,200month in property tax alone.- You mentioned kids. Before you consider your wifes income, consider the commitment youre making in depending on that income. I.e., your wife will need to continue working once the kids come and youll have to pay for daycare. You should have a talk with your wife on if she wants to stay at home -- or at least have the option.- Figure out how much your income you could dedicate to housing without making a change you dont want to. See if you live that way by paying rent saving the difference for at least six months. Are you making changes youre really not happy with? E.g., forgoing trips, eating out, and so on? Be sure youre still saving for retirement have an emergency fund.- Interest rates are going to change and that has a big influence on how much house youre going to be able to afford. Once you figured out how much you pay per month, theres calculators online that tell you how large the equivalent loan would be. You usually need to plug in an interest rate as well. You can get those pretty easily from a bunch of sites. Take that loan amount your down payment and thats the house you can afford.If youre curious what I did, I eventually did buy. There were two major deciding factors: 1 I had set a conservative cap for the house we would buy, so even if the market lost 10-20, wed be okay if we needed to sell because of an unforeseen emergecy. That came me financial comfort. 2 We were also talking about kids and I wanted my kid to grow up with a yard. I decided it wasnt a financial decision, but rather how much would I pay to make my wife kids happy. The cost in dollars justified the benefit in emotion.Good luck! 