How Much Your House Costs in Working Hours

When looking for a home and considering the payments you need to make, you typically look at numbers in dollars. But what if we looked at numbers in hours?

Fortunately, GoBankingRates.com looked at these numbers for us. It is easy to see a dollar amount on a piece of paper but how many hours do you need to accumulate to meet that number?

Of course all homes cost a different price and different jobs pay different salaries. But GoBankingRates was able to come up with an average in each state.

In North Dakota, it takes just under 45 hours on average to afford a home mortgage. The median house cost is $239,000 while the average income is $55,579. The average mortgage cost is $1,188.

Looking at those numbers, that means a person needs to work about 45 hours per month to accumulate the money for that one payment. Assuming a 40 hour work week and four weeks in a month, the average person will work 160 hours a month. That means 115 hours of your hard work can go towards other expenses.

Compared to the rest of the country, North Dakota ranks 26th in the number of hours needed to work. On this list, the state ranked No. 1, in this case Ohio, requires the least amount of working hours. In Ohio, residents need to work just under 31 hours to afford their mortgage payment.

Residents in Hawaii need to work about 88 hours a month to afford their mortgage.