<prompt> Human: So my wife and I finally paid off our last student loan and we currently hold no debt yay!!!. However now we want to buy a house but we are wary about going back into debt after this huge success. Here is little background on our financial situation:- I am 33 and my wife is 30- We make 160k a year - Between mutual funds, stocks, IRAs, HSAs, savings, checking, a 401k we have 155k between the both of us- Houses in our area for a decent neighborhood are around 350k for the same square footage as our apartment 1300 square feet- Our current rent is 1600 a month and we only pay for electric and a small fee for renters insuranceWe can afford to buy, but after a down paymentclosing costsinsurancetaxesinterestmaintenanceinspectionutilities etc. this will take a significant chunk of our savings and our monthly expenses will increase. Conventional wisdom says to buy because eventually that money will go towards building equity. But after actually running the numbers its cheaper for us to rent and we can use that money for interest or other investments. Thats why were very wary on taking on debt again after we just climbed out of it for the first time in our lives. What do you think we should do?  <response>: I think if you dont have a burning, driving desire to be a homeowner or a very strong reason aka kids to do so, you should stay in the place you are very happy with and just save a little extra in your investments to compensate for the psychological loss of throwing your money away in rent.And then when you are ready to buy, youll be in a position to do so. 