<prompt> Human: Im 31 years old, not married, never bought a home. I have a 20k emergency fund which will go down to 10k after I move because I will buy a cheap car and moving expenses. I have 80k in 401k, and 40k in a brokerage. No debt.I will be moving in the near future and taking a job where I will work from home with a rather stable 1099 income. However, the 1099 income would prevent me from getting a mortgage for at least two years. I need to decide now if I want to try to buy a starter home before I leave my current job I am easily prequalified for a 250,000 mortgage with my current income credit etc. If I were to buy, it would be lets say a 150,000 house, and so I would put about 30,000 from a brokerage to the down payment. This is tempting because buying would allow me to avoid wasting money on rent, so I can build equity, plus my mortgage payments would likely be less than monthly rent. On the other hand, renting is appealing because the 30,000 will stay in my brokerage, and can grow that way, and be easily accessible in case of emergency. Please advise me -- Ive only very recently become financially literate and this is a huge decision. I am just sick of wasting my money on rent for so many years now. Am I missing any big factors to consider? Is one of these options obviously better than the other? Thank you!  <response>: Dont think of renting as throwing money away, for one. If you buy a house you will be throwing money away on interest, closing costs, property taxes, etc. If you sell within 3-5 years you will be throwing away even more money on more closing costs, and most of your payments the first few years would have been to interest - very little towards principle. The amount of money you pay on rent is the maximum you have to spend on housing. The amount of money you spend on a mortgage is the minimum. You also have to factor in repairs and maintenance which could be quite hefty some years. 