<prompt> Human: My husband and I are planning on having our first kid in about 3 years. We live in the Midwest, in a relatively low cost city, and both have decent jobs. I work as a 911 dispatcher making 30k a year before taxes. He works at a hospital making 27k a year before taxes. Our goal, in short, is to buy a home and have a baby in the next 3-4 years, and then to switch to one income for a bit so my husband can stay home with the kid.Weve never been good with money at all, and in college I got into trouble with credit cards and filed bankruptcy in order to shovel myself out of debt. Since then weve gotten better jobs and always pay our bills on time, but now its time to take the next step and start SAVING and planning for the future. Every time I look at my finances and try to make a plan, though...it just bums me out. We want to buy a modest house in a neighborhood nearby, and most of them are around 70k. In order to JUST afford the down payment for that house Id have to save 300month every month for 3 years. Thats a lot of money. Is there a way to buy a home without a full 20 down payment that ISNT a terrible idea? Ive heard 0 down means you have to get extra mortgage insurance which makes the monthly payment bigger and means you dont grow equity as quickly. Our goal is to figure out a way to pay about as much for our house paymentinsurancetaxes as we do currently for our rent 575month. Plus with my past bankruptcy in 2012 Im going to have to work on rebuilding my credit and might not have it where it needs to be by the time we want to buy. I havent used a credit card since I declared bankruptcy because Im a bit scared about being able to control myself. But I read somewhere that I need to get a CC and use it monthly and pay it off to build my credit. The reason we want to buy a home is that currently we live in a small but very nice townhouse and would like someplace slightly bigger when we have a kid. I would also love a small yard for a kid to run around in. Is this a crack dream? Should I just get over it and make home-buying a 5-10 years down the road plan?  <response>: I honestly dont think youre in a good position to buy a home. Between the down payment issue, poor credit due to bankruptcy, and the fact that you plan to drop down to a single income... it seems like you would be setting yourselves up for a pretty rough situation financially.If you cant afford to save 300 per month right now, how are you going to live and support a child on half of your current income? 