<prompt> Human: My fiance and I are both 24 and we currently live together in an apartment. Our lease expires in May, and she thinks we should buy a townhousecondo rather than renting an apartment for another year. I know next to nothing about mortgages and real estate, but my instinct is that its a terrible idea given our financial situation mainly hers. I currently make 60k per year. I should be getting a promotion within this year which would bring me up to around 70k, but its not a guarantee. My only debt is my student loans, which is 18k. The required monthly payment is 220, but Ive been paying 350 to get it down quicker. I have about 10k in savings, and about 3k in checking that I use for paying bills and general spending. The real problem is my fiances situation. She makes 37k per year, and she has 120k in student loans. She doesnt have a required payment yet because shes still in grad school, but shes still been paying around 1000 a month on them just to keep the interest from piling up. Im not sure how much her required payments will be once she graduates in May, but I imagine theyll be pretty high. She has next to nothing in savings due to how much shes been paying on her loans. Shes hoping to get a higher paying job after she graduates, but she hasnt even started looking yet so obviously thats no guarantee. She insists that she would be able to contribute to the mortgage payments and other costs, but I have doubts about that. Another thing is that real estate isnt cheap in our area. In the town we live in now and ideally would like to stay in, decent townhousescondos start around 225k. We could find somewhere in the 150-200k range, but it wouldnt be very nice or would be in a different town farther away. I really dont want to commit to buying a place thats crappy or in a location I dont like. I keep trying to tell her I think its a bad idea, but everybody shes talked to about it just keeps reinforcing her thoughts. I thought bringing it up here and getting some feedback ftom people who know a lot about this kind of thing would be helpful. Any thoughts would be appreciated!  <response>: Renew your lease and look again after she gets that higher paying job. 