<prompt> Human: Been reading the wiki and feel like Ill be glued to it for the next couple weeks.Heres my situation and imo I feel like its rough, but it could always be worse. Mainly looking for a general direction and opening a dialog among any people in a similar boat and hoping it helps me come to a conclusion on charting my future.32 M married with 1 kid and another on the way. Live in So Cal, have an amazingly lucky situation where I live for free due to in-laws. Work a lot but salary of just under 50k, household income of 70k and have between my wife and I about 30k saved in various accounts.Dont own any property, no assets that come to mind, have no stocks and to my knowledge between her and myself little to zero retirement saving outside of just our checking and savings account.She has no major debt and I have about 5,000 in cc debt and possibly more but the pressing debt is just that to my knowledge.My goal is to own a home within the next couple years but more importantly than that I want some level of financial freedom so that my kids never struggle. I know there is a reddit for that as well but basically I feel like Im an idiot with finances and in maximizing what I have.I feel like my income is too low to do any major moves and I want to take advantage of my blessings no rent but not sure if I should invest in stocks, gamble at a casino, buy cheap property to start owning. Im good at saving but not good at making anything happen with my money. TLDRWant to buy a home cars feel like a responsible adult but not sure what steps to take first to maximize my wealth considering I have below average income.Thanks for reading through all this rambling and just wanted to get this out of my head  <response>: Few notes:1 Youre living rent free, dual income of 70kyear, and only have 30k saved up. You are leaking somewhere in your finances, should have more saved up unless the income just started recently or you were paying off things like debt. First and foremost you need to shore up a lot of unnecessary costs. The wiki will help you with that I think. 2 Your income is average everywhere in the country EXCEPT in California and a few other HCOL areas. If you want to create financial stability for you and future kids you need to either raise your income or move somewhere with a lower cost of living.3 I hate to say it, but there is no way that you will be able to qualify to own a home in SoCal with that income and those savings for another decade. Refer to 2 for how to proceed. 4 TLDR: Cut unnecessary expenses, raise income, move to lower cost of living area, educate yourself on retirement strategies 401k, Roth IRA, etc 