You're making a lot of assumptions here, none of which might be true, and which are incredibly individualized. "I have a mortgage on a house" tells you essenti

You're making a lot of assumptions here, none of which might be true, and which are incredibly individualized. "I have a mortgage on a house" tells you essentially nothing about a person's finances, how they financed the house, their assets, their monthly expenses or their debt-to-income ratio. Some people might have put 20% down, avoided PMI, have no other debt and only put down 20% because they wanted to hold onto cash. They had a good credit score, and got a reasonable interest rate. Others may have utilized any one of a number of loan programs to put down > 5%, which they financed through loans from family, or emptying their 401K, got a not great rate, have PMI, have student loans on top of that, a healthcare debt, etc. You have zero information beyond "well, they have a house."