I have written several times that I don’t use spreadsheets or budgets.
However, once when buying our first home I spent endless hours with paper and pencil trying to determine if we could afford a house and for how much?
It was 1971. I had gotten out of the army 18 months before and we had one child. Connie stopped working in July 1970. Mortgage interest rates were about 7.5% and you needed a 20% down payment.
I drew a grid on a piece of paper. One side had monthly mortgage payments and the other monthly property taxes. The idea was to look where the two intersected to see what we could afford. We agonized over the grid for months regularly concluding there was nothing we could afford.
Our income that year was $12,575. The current median household income is estimated at $78,171.
Nevertheless we kept looking for a house.
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QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
My experience was similar. I joined the Army in 1971 and bought a house in Petersburg VA in 1977. $32,000 with a VA loan, only 5% down. The interest rate was I think about 8.5%. PMI was about $375. Together my wife and I were making about $12,000 a year.
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Location, location, timing…
My wife was buying a house in the Bay Area when we married. She paid just over $20,000 in 1980. Mortgage, property tax an insurance were $220 a month.
The house is now listed on Zillow at over one million dollars. We now live in a larger, newer house in a good neighborhood 150 miles southwest. $280,000, $2,000/mo.
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