insert teeth-gnashing here

[vsp]

Nope. The closest I've come to that part of PA is an every-six-months-or-so trip to Franklin Mills. When I'm travelling, it's usually either to the west or south, or to visit the in-laws in north-central PA.

(Glatt) Paying $1800 monthly on 70K is not hard. You just need to change your lifestyle a little.

That's assuming that the 70K remains stable, which is another consideration, as I don't have a lot of faith in the economy (and, correspondingly, the job market) at the moment. How November goes will play a big role in that, of course... but if I lose my job for whatever reason in the near future, I have considerable doubt that I'd be able to find a job and make what I make now, and I can never rule out some corporate beancounter making me irrelevant with the stroke of a pen. Likewise, if we have kids, that's a period of time where my wife's income will be absent and/or diminished, and that has to be figured in as well.

There are obviously things that we can cut out without going on the total ketchup-soup-for-dinner plan. There are second-job possibilities. There are other ways of raising income and lowering expenses. But the pessimist in me is already recoiling at the notion of a thirty-year-commitment risk to begin with; I can't reasonably go that high on the monthly commitment and gamble that nothing bad will interfere with that over that period.