Hello Personal Finance.

My wife and I are going to start looking to buy a home sometime soon. We are both in our mid 20's.

To give you a breakdown of our financials...we have :

- 200k combined yearly income
- 0 debt of any sort
- Nearly max out our 401ks
- Very good credit
- Monthly combined income (post tax, 401k, etc) of around 8k

We are in the San Diego area and are **looking to buy a house in the 650k range**.

We will have 170k saved in cash saved between my wife and I at the end of the year. Both our parents are willing to loan us around 40k each. So that means **we have access to around 250k in cash**.

Obviously we want to put enough down to avoid PMI. That magical number to do that would be around 20%, so around 130k down. We will probably end up with a 30 year loan.

My father has recently brought up these new [low down payment loans, where you only have to put down around 3% and not pay pmi] you can already read about it [here] He thinks we should try to use a loan like this and only put the 3% down (or some other low amount) and save the rest of our cash.

Obviously this would mean that my wife and I would be paying a lot more interest over the course of the loan.

**My question is, since my wife and I have been saving to buy a house for a long time and have the cash to put 20-25% down....do you think we should put 20% down....or put a low amount down (like 3-5%) if we don't have to pay PMI.**

Obviously we want to have at least 15k saved in our "rainy day fund" as well as some extra cash on hand to do upgrades, buy furniture, etc.
user
Do you think that we should
assistant
Hello Personal Finance.

My wife and I are going to start looking to buy a home sometime soon. We are both in our mid 20's.

To give you a breakdown of our financials...we have :

- 200k combined yearly income
- 0 debt of any sort
- Nearly max out our 401ks
- Very good credit
- Monthly combined income (post tax, 401k, etc) of around 8k

We are in the San Diego area and are **looking to buy a house in the 650k range**.

We will have 170k saved in cash saved between my wife and I at the end of the year. Both our parents are willing to loan us around 40k each. So that means **we have access to around 250k in cash**.

Obviously we want to put enough down to avoid PMI. That magical number to do that would be around 20%, so around 130k down. We will probably end up with a 30 year loan.

My father has recently brought up these new [low down payment loans, where you only have to put down around 3% and not pay pmi] you can already read about it [here] He thinks we should try to use a loan like this and only put the 3% down (or some other low amount) and save the rest of our cash.

Obviously this would mean that my wife and I would be paying a lot more interest over the course of the loan.

**My question is, since my wife and I have been saving to buy a house for a long time and have the cash to put 20-25% down....do you think we should put 20% down....or put a low amount down (like 3-5%) if we don't have to pay PMI.**

Obviously we want to have at least 15k saved in our "rainy day fund" as well as some extra cash on hand to do upgrades, buy furniture, etc.
user
Should we put 20% down on
assistant