I recently found out that my friend and coworker had bought a house that cost $4 million. I was shocked because I knew the area it was located in and I was expecting it to cost much more. He hadn’t told any of us at work about it until he took me to the house on Sunday. It turned out that he had sold his previous house for $687,000 and was using it to make a down payment of 20% on the new house.
This news was even more surprising because I knew his salary at work was somewhere between $185,000 and $190,000 and his wife is a nurse with a salary between $90,000 and $120,000. It seemed impossible that they could afford such an expensive house.
When I asked him about it, he revealed that he had also been teaching hand drawing and graphic design during the weekends and one night each week. This extra income had given them the money they needed to make the purchase.
He also told me that the annual tax would be a little bit above $41,000 and the home owners association fee was $14,400. This meant that the total amount they had to pay each year for tax and HOA was more than $55,000.
My friend and coworker had managed to purchase a multi-million dollar house despite the fact that his salary was lower than what I expected. He had achieved this through his hard work and dedication, as well as his wife’s support. It was great to see that someone with a lower salary could still make a substantial purchase like this.