All right let’s talk through this a bit. Let’s say you earn like 90K a year.

Uncle Sam takes about ~25%ish to make things simple, so we’re looking at 67,5K take home, so $5625 monthly. But you’re doing as the logical advice says and you’re paying 5% into your 401K since your job matches it, and it comes out pre-tax, so recalculating, you’re at $5250 a month take home. But wait! There’s also healthcare to pay, which has medical, dental, and vision paid separately, post-tax, which we’ll say is around $250 a month, so now we’re actually down to $5K take home.

A mortgage that comes to $28K yearly would be something like $2300/month, so we’re down to $2750 for everything else.

Now, assuming you’re between 25-45, you’re a millennial who likely hasn’t been able to save up 80K for a 20% down payment, so you’ll be paying mortgage insurance, but you’ve got a great credit score, so you’ll be adding about $400 a month for the PMI. Then there’s property taxes going straight into your escrow account, which we’ll say is around $400 to make things simple.

Then, you’re going to have your homeowner’s insurance, which might be around $150 a month, plus you’ve bought in an actual neighborhood, so you’ve got a little HOA fee of $30 a month.

Now, we’re down to $1720 a month after we’ve covered taxes and just having a place to live. This is where we get into the fun budgeting items.

Basic utilities (electric $80, gas $50, internet $90, water $30, trash $20, car fuel $40) come to around $310/month. You’ve then got your mobile devices ($100), maybe two streaming accounts ($25), and then accounting for things you pay yearly (Xbox $5, Office $8). You likely had to pay for the move into your new home as well as a couple of newer furnishings on a credit card, so we’ll assume just some base card debt of $300/month. Plus since you’re a millennial, you’ve likely got a student loan you’re still paying ($200/month). Overall, we’re around $950 just living in this house, which brings us down to about $770/month at this point.

We haven’t yet accounted for food and amenities which can vary widely. A nice food budget that allows for a couple meals that can be made at home these days will run a single person about $100 a week. Amenities can range anywhere from haircuts to tampons to sandwich baggies so you can bring your lunch and snacks to work, and then if you’ve got one small cat, you’re adding in litter, food, and pet insurance. If you’re allergic to grass, like I am, you’ll need to pay for lawn care, too which can add an additional $100-200. If you’ve got a car payment, you’re adding an additional ~$400.

Let’s assume that your meals, amenities, and car payments eat up that remaining $770 a month. If you are ever too tired to make dinner one a week, you’re already going over budget. If the 15-year-old water heater goes, you’re looking to go into debt to cover that, and if you do something like get married and have a kid, the hope is that the spouse is bringing in another $90K because childcare is so outrageous, one of you would just be better off staying at home with the kid. If property taxes go up, the funds going into your home escrow are going to make things even tighter.

Could you make your $2300/month base mortgage work if you’re making 90K/annually? Yeah, with a very tight budget and having none of the more asinine homeownership issues, it’s more or less doable. That said, there’s just not a lot of people in the 25-45 age bracket that are earning that 90K and the average is coming around to $2300/month, and this is all assuming you can get a bid accepted when there’s some corporation planning to rent the property who’ll offer 20% over the asking price.

TL;DR: $28,000/year is ridiculous.