I bought my house when I was single for 265k in 2007 on a 65k salary and 10% down. Because of when I bought the house I was under water for the first 5 years. Today I am married with 3 kids and our household income is about 5x what it was when I bought the house. Today the house is worth 450k maybe more, and we owe 150k on it. So we have about 300k in equity. We talk about moving to a bigger house a lot but we love our neighborhood and friends there so it would be tough.

It feels pretty amazing now to see our mortgage go down so much every month (refinanced last year 10yr 2.00% apr). Currently about 1200 is going to principal vs 200 toward interest. So I think we made the right financial decision to stay... though we wish we had more house because of our 3 kids and lack of space for all their crap lol