I want to buy a house, but I don't know where to start.

Step by step guide:

  1. Your girlfriend finds a real estate agent to sell her condo.

  2. You use your cash savings to help her pay off the loan balance and closing costs that the sale doesn't cover. You're not married, but you'll help anyway because you're going to spend the rest of your lives together.

  3. Rent an apartment the two of you can live in without a child. Bigger than the condo is fine. Big enough for a family of four is not fine.

  4. Drastically increase the amount of money you put toward your loans and cash savings. Avocado toast is a dumb meme, but a "Miscellaneous odds and ends: $2500/month" (or whatever amount isn't accounted for) line item on your budget is unacceptable. That's the wasteful and irresponsible part, that you don't know where it's going.

  5. Pay off the $60k in student loans. If you keep making good money, this shouldn't take more than a couple years. It only seems hard because, again, you don't know (or won't say) where you're wasting that much money.

  6. Get married when you can afford the wedding you want with cash savings. So, cheap wedding, if you want to have it soon.

  7. Have a kid after you've saved up a year's worth of pre-kid expenses in cash, beyond retirement savings. Hint: This happens sooner if you figure out how to spend less money, because it's a double whammy of lower expenses and higher savings.

  8. Buy a house when you can easily afford the 20% down payment plus closing costs without using your emergency fund, and even then only if you can explain why buying makes more sense than renting the same house.

This can happen in five years if you work your ass off to figure out your budget issues.

/r/personalfinance Thread