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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I recall in PreCana when I got engaged the people giving instructions to the newly engaged couples what to expect had words of wisdom. Three married couples presented, one married 3 years, 20 years and 50 years!!

All agreed newly engaged couples need to start saving asap for a house, then after married save, save and save and buy house before kid born. Once kids born hard to save and little time for a fixer upper or home repairs.

I listened and bought a smaller fixer upper in a second tier neighborhood when my wife was 3 months pregnant with first. We had time to close, 3 months to do painting, get nursery set up. Being young still family willing to help with painting etc. (not an option now)

Home prices kept shooting up. My wife left work for good when baby six months old. Why we had the house locked in forever. My town schools were great. But second tier as HS not as good.

But given rising home prices if I waited dream area with home prices rapidly rising then paying two commutes and child care how does waiting work?

Thing if you bought a fixer upper in silver spring near metro or even a tiny tiny run down shack inBethesda on a busy street in 2015. You have it almost paid off by now, paying no rent and have close to one million equity between down payment, home appreciation and paying down mortgage. Yea it would be a sucky house for 10 years so be it. But you would not be 45, homeless with two kids at mercy of landlord [/quote]

I agree with the advice to save as much as you can early and buy a house before you have kids. Kids are just endless expenses, it never lets up. It just really makes sense to lock in a mortgage of some kind before you have them, because then that expense stays steady and you can plan family finances around it.

But I think it can be hard for many people because there's a generation of people who borrowed quite a bit of money for school. Your first priority after that is to pay down those loans (at least for many people) and that means focusing on work, not necessarily on finding a partner. So that means that people don't save as much in cash savings in their 20s as they used to, and it also means they get married later. So then you get married early 30s and don't always have much cash on hand. Some people get money from parents, or are high paid enough by then to save a down payment quickly, or do creative things like borrow agains their 401k (I know several people who did that, actually). But if there is no family assistance and your incomes are good but not great (especially if you live in a high COL area like DC), you'll be saving much more slowly.

But becoming parents is not something you can postpone indefinitely. And that's what leads to people having kids in their mid-30s before buying a home. They want to have kids while they are still relatively young, they aren't ready to buy, and then kids come along and make it really hard to save.

My DH and I resolved that problem by having a kid later. We prioritized buying a home and then I had a baby at 37. It's not necessarily the way we would have liked to do it, and it meant we only had one kid (which is sad in some ways but also has a lot of financial benefits). But it means we started building equity sooner and are in a better position than OP in our 40s. For us it was worth it because we grew up in families where money was always tight and there was never enough, so having financial stability before we had kids was really important. But it was hard and yes, I do wish we'd met earlier, or paid off our loans earlier, or lived in a lower COL area, all of which might have enabled us to both buy a home and have kids earlier. But you don't always hav perfect control over these things.[/quote]

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