<prompt> Human: Hey all,Ive seen the 28-30 rule before. Meaning, take your gross monthly income. Your monthly payment shouldnt be anymore than 28 of that number. I feel that number is somewhat inflated. It doesnt take I to account things like what your actual net takehome is. I feel like I read an alternate rule before that was a bit more realistic. But for the life of me I cant find it. For my wife and I, our gross income is something around 325,000 a year. But there are a lot of caveats to that. 1: about 30k a year of my income comes from restricted stock my company has given me and vests on a monthly basis. I leave this as stock for now so it doesnt have a ton of bearing on my actual liquid income other than for taxes of course. 2. Wife and I both max our 401ks, IRAs, we put some cash every month into a 529 For my son, and I put a little bit into an index fund as well. 3. Not much debt. I pay 200month on some student loans. No car payments. 4. Our current mortgage additional feesinsurance additional principal payments 2500month currently. This is a pretty easy payment for us to make. Still, our actual net income is much less after all withholdings. Id rather calculate what we could afford based on our actual take home pay. This is all theoretical. Were comfortable where we are for a few more years, but as our family grows and we choose to upgrade its still a nice idea to know what we could potentially afford. Thanks!  <response>: I chose my house price based on the monthly payment I was willing to make. The bank was willing to loan us almost twice as much. There was no way we could have made that payment.The salary rules of thumb are just that. They dont account for student loan payments, car payments, child care, medical - the list goes on. Some people have those payments, some do not. 