<prompt> Human: If youre a homeowner, you can calculate your mortgage:income ratio sometimes called a front-end ratio by dividing your monthly mortgage costs usually including associated costs like homeowners insurance, property tax and mortgage insurance by your pretax monthly salary.For example, if you earn 10,000 per month 120,000 per year salary and you pay 2,000 per month in mortgage costs and related fees, your mortgage:income ratio is 0.20. 0.20 2,000 10,000Lenders recommend that this number not go above 0.28, but we at Personal Finance know that this number should be as low as you can make it while meeting your housing requirements. So Id love to hear from folks who own their homes: What is your mortgage:income ratio? What was it when you bought your house? What area do you live in? or: do you live in a low or high cost-of-living area? Does your mortgage feel too high? Conversely, do you ever wish you took on a larger mortgage for a more expensive house? Any general advice about finding the right ratio?Looking forward to some good conversation!  <response>: 9.4 of my gross income excluding bonuses goes to my mortgage, property tax and insurance mortgage is self is 5.8. We bought our house 1.5 years ago, so it hasnt changed much. Duel income that are roughly the equal. Midwest, but expensive for midwest No, mortgage feels pretty good, but property tax feels high different story. Its a little complicated, our house is a tad small for what we want it to be. Its currently 1000 sqft, I would really prefer it to be 1400 sqft. In order to have a slightly larger house, we would either have to add on to the current house and that extra 400 sqft is apparently going to cost about the same as my mortgage. Or I could go buy a slightly larger home that would only increase my mortgage by 1.5x. However, we are very specific as to where we want to live, so that makes buying a new home more complicated. In short, yes, I wish we took out a larger mortgage for a more expensive house, but because limitations on available housing, we werent able to. Our limit seems to be 2x our salaries but more comfortable with 1.5x our salaries, currently our mortgage is our 1 year gross. We bought a house that we can afford on one salary just in case one of us looses our jobs. Since we have similar salaries, it was an easy calculation. Our mortgage is about the same as our one year gross, so were pretty comfortable with it. This also helps with our goal of early retirement. My advice is list your goals in life whatever they may be and find a home that fits into that. If you would prefer a larger, more expensive home, other areas would have to suffer. If you accept that then it may be justifiable. You cant have your cake and eat it too. However, finding the right home is more than just mortgage:income ratio. We found a house that is good for us even if its on the smaller side with a high property tax because it fits in our goals and value system. 