<prompt> Human: Hello rpersonalfinance!As the title says, my girlfriend and I are looking to purchase our first home in February. We dont have good credit, and are currently renting a home for 980month. I would prefer to purchase a brand new home in a developing neighborhood. Im thinking a 200k mortgage should suffice. I have no idea how attainable my goals are, if at all. If so, I have no idea how to efficiently go about this. Im hoping you can provide me with a bit of insight. Heres more detail on our current situation:IncomeCurrently, at my job, I make a gross income of 31K a year. After taxes and insurance expenses, I make around 20.8k a year. I have been with this job for 3 years now. My girlfriend is a server. The majority of her income comes in tips. I would estimate she makes an average of 350week give or take. Including her hourly wage, I would estimate she pulls in an average of 20K a year. Making our combined total income around 40.8K per year. CreditAs of now, both of us have pretty bad credit. My score is around 545, and hers is about the same. I would roughly estimate that combined, we probably owe 3K or so in debt. Perhaps more. Also something to note: When we were 18, we had both got credit cards with about a 600 limit this was before we knew each other. Stupidly, we both maxed them out and didnt pay them off. We are both 26 now. We havent had any credit cards since then, as we are unable to be approved for one. Additional Information-I do my taxes every year. However, she has not filed her taxes for the last 4 years or so Which is incredibly infuriating for me. Im not sure what effect this will have on our ability to qualify for the mortgage I want, but I figured it would be important to note. -Im currently going to school for Networking Engineering. So far, Ive only taken out 1.7K in student loans. I should have my degree and be job ready in 2 years. -Preferably, I would like to purchase a house with little to no down payment. Im not sure how possible this is given my situation. -We have a 3 year old son together. ConclusionI would consider myself quite uneducated in the world of finance. Especially in regards to mortgages and purchasing a home. So if my post here comes off stupid, please bear with me. I would like to know if my goal is at all possible, and if so, how I would go about reaching my goal. Thank you for reading! Im looking forward to your replies. Edit: If any additional information is required in order to determine how attainable this is for me, please let me know. Final Edit: I cannot begin to express how grateful I am for the insight you have all provided. It is clear to me that I will not be buying a house anytime soon. From what Ive read here, it would be an extremely stupid thing to do. You have all provided fantastic information regarding what steps I need to take to get there. Im definitely going to be sticking around this sub to become more educated on personal finance. Thank you all again.  <response>: You took the time to write out a very detailed and clear post. So even though people are objecting strongly to the contents of your post, I think you deserve an equally detailed and clear explanation. Firstly, before we even get into the particulars of your finances, lets talk about buying a home with someone whom is not your legal married spouse. If your name is on the mortgage, but both of you are on the deed, you are essentially paying 100 for something you only 50 own. In a marriage, you already only own everything 5050 anyways, no big deal. If you get a divorce, the house will be included in your divorce agreement. Your lawyers and judge will see to the division of that asset. If you are not married, she still own 50 of the house, and you still own 100 of the debt to that house. That means when you go to sell the house, shell get 50 of the proceeds. Or she can refuse to move out. Or lots of disaster threads to be found on rpf about this.That said, youve got a kid together. Youre in a relationship. You might consider getting married. Lets talk taxes. She should begin filing her taxes. She is probably avoiding this because she is not recording her tip income and not paying taxes on it. This will absolutely come to haunt you. Lets talk incomes.A good rule of thumb for determining how much house you can buy is 3x your income. That would put you at 120k. Pretty far off from your 200k. So youre in school. Great. Why would you want to buy a house, which literally and financially ties you to one location, when youve got a big change in your life coming after graduation? And lets talk about the ways in which buying a house constricts you, especially with no down payment. Houses can go up and down in value. If you buy with 0 down, and take a 30 year mortgage, youre only paying a tiny fraction of your monthly payment towards your principle in the first years. What if after graduation you get a great job offer and need to move? And in those first few years of homeownership the price of your home has dropped 3? You now cannot sell you house. You cannot move. You are underwater on your mortgage. Youre forced to pay rent in a new town, and mortgage in your old town. This is a fast track to foreclosure. Foreclosures are devastating to your credit. So lets talk about your credit scores.You need to start by pulling your credit report from the links in the Wiki. You need to find out what is lowering them and then read about how to fix them. Paying off that old 600 credit card would be a pretty good blind guess. If youve got late payments, it takes 2 years for them to drop off your report. Accounts in collections are longer. Again, read the wiki. You need to get all accounts out of collections and with current payments before you would even possibly be considered for a mortgage. And paying off that debt, is related to your savings and your budget. The well I could have paid off my debt but I just kinda didnt. Whoops! is not how one does adulting young sir. Think about where your expenses are going, how you can cut them, how much you can pay down your debt and how much you can start saving each month. You might be well prepared for homeownership in 2 or 3 years, but 6 months is just not going to happen. Thatll be before you son goes into 1st grade. Which means youve got some choice over his school district. Every time you decide to spend money think about how youre literally taking away from your sons future. That should be a nice dose of motivation. 