<prompt> Human: Im in my young twenties, have no debt, credit history, or savings. I make 18000 a year, and live with my parents.Ive grown up dealing with severe depression and the past few years have been pretty rough, but Im finally achieving some semblance of balance in my life. School was too expensive and Ive been pretty much working pay-check to pay-check and moving around for the last 3 years. I dont have any savings to speak of and havent even touched a credit line or plan or whatever. Im pretty financially illiterate but stable.Thats the bad news; the good news is:Im living rent free for now, I have a stable source of income making 9hr hey, at least its not minimum wage, and as I said have no debt other than I still owe my brother like 200 bucks. Ive been making a lot of progress with my depression and have, at least, a desire to start planning for my future.And heres the hard part:I want to find some relatively cheap land and build a house by myself. Ive already begun designing it. Using affordable materials Im planning on making it completely energy-sufficient or off-the-grid. However, I have no idea where to begin. What sort of legalpermit requirements need to be sorted. Things like that.I suppose my question is: what can I do to start saving or investing in to help? Is a small loan a good idea? The idea being preparing while aggressively saving.Update EditThank you for all the answers! I really appreciate the support. I should clarify a bit however, I do already have the general designlayout of the house and specific materials in mind that should prove affordable and relatively less labor intensive. I do plan on incorporating solar power and a waste re-purposing system.The main reason I brought up the idea of a loan or mortgage was for the land. Im planning on moving somewhere to the Northwest or West coast of the US. Does anyone know of an online resource for land sales? Or how much things like that cost?Thanks!  <response>: You arent crazy for wanting to follow your dream. Even if the dream is impossible to imagine completing now, you can eventually over time close in on that dream. I think starting to save right now is a great idea. Also, learning on the job and starting to build relationships at work are two things you can do to hopefully get your salary higher.Save what you can, move your money into a an investment account and start to read about investing your money. There are tons of sources to read from, but just start from the beginning. I suggest the sub-reddit investing There are many threads there that can help you with understanding how to attain your goals. 