Oh dang, I gotta go searching for this other guy. I missed the fun!
I was surprised when I went through the whole process that they didn't count other monthly expenses. I guess they just figure that if it's between paying your mortgage or your cell phone bill, you'll choose your house, so they don't care.
As for a first time home buying class, I can't imagine it wouldn't help at least a little bit for general knowledge, but you'll never stay in your first home unless you get extremely lucky.
Our first home that we are about to sell we absolutely hate, even though 2 years ago we loved it. So many things that we thought we would want, or we thought were nice, actually turned out to be terrible. We hate stairs, even though I thought I'd love having a multi level house. We hate the pool, even though we thought it was so nice to have our own pool. Storage space... thought the place had so much until we started to actually live in the house, and realized all the storage was terrible.
Our 2nd house that we are buying, both the wife and I feel so much more prepared, and both know exactly what we want, and don't want this time around. I suppose there's nothing like real life experience to teach you that though.