<prompt> Human: I am in the market to either move into a new rental, or to am beginning to consider the option of buying a small home near my place of employment. I work for a state university and have no intentions of moving anytime soon. I am also working on a masters degree in IT, with hopes that it will lead to more diverse career opportunities than my current technical support work experience and English degree currently offer. I want to eventually work in Information Security, most likely focusing on application security and web development projects. I dont have to stay in graduate school full-time as Im going right now. Through my job, since I work for the school Im attending, I get a tuition waiver for 3 classes a year. This ends up covering a lot of the COA. Particulars to consider... I have around 100K in student loan debt from last 10 years. A bulk of this is in federal loans. I have two private loans, one with Sallie Mae and is my lowest interest loan due to my mom co-signing when I was younger, and the other is my highest interest loan with Discover which I hope to have paid off in the next 12 months. I have a bit of credit card debt from a recent computer purchase, but that could be paid off in a couple of months. Probably about 2K total. My credit is good rating. I know that I look less than dreamy on paper right now, but I am curious about the potential to buy instead of continuing to rent. I make around 42K per year before taxesdeductions. Benefits I could see buying this house would be: equity, tax deductions maybe?, land to plant a garden Im vegan, so I could possibly save a lot on veg this way, and being close proximity to work in a safe neighborhood on the school bus-line, I could take public transport to work and home most days or bike. I realize that with home ownership comes extra finances, such as maintenance, insuranace, the mortgage, taxes... but whose not to say I might not spend around the same amount on rent each month as it is? There is a house that has been on the market for at least a year now for 158K. I might have some power to talk it down given its time on market. It needs some updates, but theres a lot of character to the property and the house and its in a trendy and pretty safe neighborhood near good schools and a large public park. The house is in live-in condition, just outdated in some ways. There is even a wired workshop, so with my desire to learn some carpentry skills, I could easily start on that journey toward updating on my own cabinets, for example. ... Am I deluding myself in thinking this is remotely possible?  <response>: Yes, I think you are deluding yourself, unfortunately. You have 100k in student loan debt and 42k pretax income. I dont see you mentioning having savings at all. You had to finance a computer because you couldnt buy it outright. You are in no way ready to buy a house. Also, you state that you want to stay where you are, job-wise, but you also state that youre studying for a new career. A new career could come with new job options, and those could be located somewhere else in the world. In that case, you want your housing situation to be a little bit flexible. Renting would be a good thing, then! I can tell you that its great for your career if youre also able to consider job options that are more than 30 miles away from your current location. Please keep renting. And if you find any extra money in your pocket, pay off the credit card debt and after that pay down the student loans quicker. 