Mortgage Pre-Approval

Saturday morning, 9:00AM, will see us at the bank, trying to get pre-approval for a mortgage for our next home. We pretty much know which house we want to purchase. We're seeing one more home Saturday afternoon, and immediately after that, will be prepared to make an offer to someone. We just need to know how much of a mortgage we can handle on my wife's salary alone.

If we get a mortgage based solely on the single salary, it means that any income I earn from here on in can be used to build up a reserve fund (for the next rainy day), and to top up the retirement fund (which we will need to raid to get additional downpayment cash for our purchase). Why do we need to dip into retirement money? Because we'll be using the cash from the sale of our house to pay off every last dime of debt we've accumulated throughout our marriage.

My retirement account is pretty well funded (thank God for high salaries for the past few years), and if any of the money figures bandied about this afternoon actually come to fruition, I'll still be capable of putting a sizeable amount away for retirement purposes.