<prompt> Human: Thanks for your help. Heres my situation: Myself, my wife, and our young child rent a place in West LA for 1750mo. My jobs are in West LA so were looking for a place to own, Im not willing to commute so were looking at a small condo. We have about 14K in student loan debt at 6.1, min payment is 200 month. For a down payment we currently have about 58K, goal is to get to at least 75K and purchase a small condo. With a recent raise and payoff of other debt, we now have about 1K month to either save or put towards debt. Other options include retirement thinking Id like to start paying mortgage before I hit this hard and emergency fund not a focus right now since we have lots of family support if we hit hard times. That said wed really like to get into a new place and stop throwing rent down the drain. Our mortgagePMIHOA feesTaxes each month according to Zillow calculator would be 2,300 max which would still leave us 450 of discretionary income which I know isnt much but its something we could use to pay off the rest of our debt and then begin investing into retirement, emergency, etc. The number would hopefully grow as our careers advance. We try to keep a tight budget and live simply. We need about 14K to do either which could come in 6-12 months we live on my income, my wifes is a contractor and anything she earns is extra.My main question is, do you think its a bad financial move to try to get into the housing market before paying off our debt? Are there any no-brainers that Im missing in my decision-making?  <response>: Pay off your debt first. Remember, you are not throwing your rent money away. You are paying for mobility and the ability to flexibly adjust to most career changes.It is going to suck. However, you do not want to want to throw away free money to the debtors based on interest. You cannot put money into a purse that has a prominent hole near the bottom of the bag. Sew up your holes first, edok. 