<prompt> Human: Hi internet strangers!My wife and I are sooo torn over this house that we both absolutely love so we are turning to internet strangers to tilt the balance one way or the other!Heres the deal:A little background. We live in the Midwest in a relatively low COL area. We live in the capital city of our state. The local economy is good and stable.My wife and I are relatively young 32 and 33. We have single child 5 years old and are thinking about having another but arent sure. My wife and I make 110 and 200k yr, respectively, not including bonuses. Bonuses are on average another 50-60k yr. but we dont count that into our budgeting. This is way above average for the area we live in. The median income for our state is low 60s. The median income for our city is low 70s.RetirementWe have roughly 600k in retirement accounts 401ks, traditional IRAs, roth IRAs, etc.. We max out both of our 401ks and have been doing so for several years. We save about 500 mo to our sons 529 plan.SavingsWe save 5k mo into a taxable investment account. We have about 125k socked away.Emergency Fund Cash Reserves20k in a bank savings account earning 0.0005 and another 80k or so in CDs overseas with a mix of terms ranging from 3 month to 2 years.Life InsuranceWe have non-employer provided life insurance that costs about 400 mo for the both of us. This provides about 750k in death benefit it is a VUL policy.Real EstateWe own a condo outright. Its worth roughly 80k. We rent it out at 900 mo. We net about 650 mo from the rent after property taxes and condo fees.Our primary residence is worth 380k. Its about 3500 sq ft, 4br, 4ba and 3 car garage. We owe about 150k. We have a 15 yr fixed mortage with a 2.75 rate. We have a monthly payment of roughly 1,700. We pay about 700 mo in property taxes. The Dream HouseIt is 6500 sq ft. 4br, 4full ba, 3 half ba, 4 car garage. office, home theatre wine cellar game room hot tub. Riverfront property. Its like right on the river. Not on a flood plane and everything seems to check out. Gorgeous views from almost every room. New build, no problems. Much better school district than our current house. Bottom line, we love this house and fits our lifestyle on SO many levels. Asking price? ONE MILLION DOLLARS.Being both from humble middle class upbringing. We are a bit intimidated by this number. That being said we ran some numbers.Assuming we can bring 230k in equity and we can negotiate down to 900k we are looking at a mortgage of 670k. Thats 3,400 mo. Property taxes would be a whopping 1,500 mo. So compare that with that we are currently paying for primary residence that would be: 1700700 vs. 3400 1500or 2400 vs. 4900.Its double. Kind of intimidating but if we reduce our taxable savings down to 2500 mo we could easily cover the bigger mortgage property taxes.Now owning a bigger house means bigger bills all around. Lawn care, house keeping, electric, heating, etc. So if we add another 500-1000 mo just to cover deltas in these intangibles that leaves us with just 1500 in taxable savings per month. A far cry from our 5k per month which we are pretty proud of. :Nothing changes to 401k. Those are still maxed out. The 529 plan says untouched. The only reduction to our savings is to taxable savings.We have no plan for this savings. We are just savers. We have flirted about retiring early but we both love our jobs so even if we were financially independent we would probably both still work.We really wanna do it but we a are scared. ONE, its a lot of money and TWO, we are used to saving a much higher percentage of our income. BUT, on the other hand, we are feeling like, YOLO! this place would be an awesome place to live and raise our son family.I know everybody wants different things out of a house home so just imagine your perfect house and look at the financial situation. Assuming its the perfect house for you and your spouse and you were in our financial situation, what would you do? YOLO and drop 1M and pay the 18k year in property taxes for the higher quality of life?ORStay in a nice and comfortable house in a decent school district. Pay off the house in 8 years and keep stacking Benjamins just because you can? EDIT: added emergency fund and cash reservesAssistant: Do you want to live in a nicer house or retire earlier? How long do you both want to work? You can afford the nicer house. But it will be harder to save. Do you really want to live on a river? From personal experience, waterfront property can be terrible to maintain. Have you smelled the river during the hotter summer months? Is the water going to bring a crazy amount of bugs? Do you have to worry about your kid, or your next kid or their friend drowning? I would never do it again. It was pretty but not worth it. I would much rather have water views at a distance. Lastly think about the impression this makes. Do your friends and acquaintances live in houses this nice? Do you want to show off your success? Have you thought about your kids expectations and how they might change growing up in a different class of home? You might love this house because it is a joy to live in, but you must consider the status symbol impact. Growing up in a 2million dollar home felt uncomfortable to me. It felt superficial, and somewhat pointless. Few of my peers were down to earth people, and rich kids have a reputation and may be resented. Kids know how if another kid is privileged by their house. This home is not just a comfort consideration, it will have an impact on the way your kid grows up. There is a big difference between wanting and excess and that 1mm home is excessively large. If one of you stop working will you feel comfortable with your lifestyle? Probably not. You will be house poor. My in laws are house poor. They live in a nearly 3mil home with sweeping views but dont feel like they have the spending money to fly and visit their children as much as they would like now that they are trying to retire. They are looking to downsize the view at least but it is hard. What are they going to do with the wine collection from the wine room? This is a big decision because it will be hard to downsize or go back after this. This is a major lifestyle change for your family. Sure, you can afford it right now, and you could aggressively pay it down to feel more secure, but think of the social implications. Also, I cant imagine maintenance on a house that size. You would need a cleaning service with multiple people, or clean in a rotation Human: Great points.We have always been kind of outliers within our social circle. We bought our current home in our mid twenties, while all our friends were still going to bars and renting. I think you are right that this new place would put everything out in the open and could potentially cause tension with some current relationships and future relationships. At least with our current home we can still pose as middle class. After going through a bit of this tension with our friends in our twenties I think all our real friends are still with us so hopefully that wouldnt be an issue.w.r.t. kids, we are hoping that we can tackle that through teaching our children about money, achievement, and the correlation to a strong work ethic and decision making. Regardless of what house we live in I think this is a challenge for kids. My wife and I both grew up middle class so we dont know what the other side was like at that age but even in middle class schools and social circles there is still a tremendous amount of pressure to show your status. Remember those, your dad works for my dad slogans at football games? All being chanted by otherwise middleupper middle class kids.  <response>: Tension isnt a big worry, as you noted. Your friends will think the house is awesome. A bigger change is your identity. Buying this house makes you the rich friends in many peoples minds. Really think about if that is important to you. I have friends that make similar amounts to you doctorprogram manager and they live in a split level. If they purchased a 6500sqft mansion it would change my perception perhaps subconsciously of them. Now he is just a high school friend but I might think of him as my rich or extravagant friend. Im not saying it is better or worse, but your home is an extension of your identity. 6500SQFT is upper class territory. On the flip side, if you want to change school districts do it while your kid is young. More riverfront considerations: Think about erosion mitigation, and mosquitos. 