<prompt> Human: So to cut to the meat of the topic Im 21 years old working with a trade degree and make pretty good money for the area I live in Louisiana. In march of next year I will be getting married and her parents are paying for the wedding. We both currently live with our respective parents and need to find a place to live by February.Now for the numbers and other important information I make around 73kyr before tax with raise coming soon She makes 12kyr hoping she can find a better job My only debt is 8k car loan 300mo that I will be paying off in full by the end of the year and then possibly selling it due to high insurance Hers is a 15k student loan her parents are paying unsure if its in her name yet or not We are looking at homes around the 130k and 150k range Currently saving up for 1237; down plus closing costs. I have 12k in savings very horrible money habits leading up to a couple months ago, i.e. truck loan Working on saving 22k for the house down-payment 1237; down plus closing fees, 6k for an emergency fund, 2k for the honey moon and then the remainder of whatever I save trying to pay off my truck. Hoping to keep mortgage payments at 900 a month or less enough for her paycheck to cover because my paychecks are based on lots of overtime and sometimes if work is slow Ill get a couple smaller paychecksMy issue is I dont know what my credit score is always been told checking it lowers it and knew it wasnt worth checking yet. Ive been paying on my truck for around 15 months currently no other loans or utilities bills or phone contract in my name and plan on going to get a credit card only to charge around 150 a month on and pay it off in full every month to help build my credit between now and when we wanna buy. I want to avoid renting and jump into a house right away because we dont plan on moving anytime soon. My question is can we afford it? Can I build enough credit in time? Thanks in advance for any replies and I apologize for any formatting or grammar errors that there may be.  <response>: We bought a house at that age. It was a mistake. I thought I knew exactly what I wanted - where I wanted to live, what kind of neighborhood, what kind of house - but I didnt. We spent ten years in that house, much of it slightly underwater making it impossible to move on without 10-15k to cover the selling costs, much less the down payment on a new place. When we finally could move, we paid about 315k for the place we bought. The thing is, it had been up for sale six years prior - we found notes about it online where we had actually driven past and recorded it as a possibility - and then it was only 225k. Yes, four years after buying our first house we were driving around neighborhoods on the other side of town looking for someplace different. We not only could have gotten the place for 90k less, but six years earlier, if we hadnt been stuck in a mortgage we couldnt get out of, because we were too young to really understand what we wanted out of a home. I very much wanted out of an apartment, to not share walls with anyone, but renting a house would have been the smarter move I think. 