Ways to avoid debt?

Shotty, that's the point. There ARE no $90K townhomes/condos/etc. in the places where I have lived. Three years ago I was looking into buying a condo, and the absolute bottom of the barrel in my zip code was $160K in a complex that I considered unsafe.

Doing a quick search on homes.com for townhomes/condos in my current city, the highest asking price is $450K for a 3BD/2BA townhome and the lowest is $179K for a 2BD/2BA. There are eight pages of listings in between.

EDIT: I was curious, so I looked up the same for single-family homes. Top price is $2.6M for 4BD/4BA, low price is $98K for a 3BD/2BA manufactured home.

 

If you can handle the payments, great.

If you are struggling with 15-year payments, though, hopping onto a 30, like, right now, could be a godsend.

The key, for me, is being able to spend memorable time with my kids. I have less than seven more years with them in the house.

I will have traveled with them, sent them to camp, given them unique experiences by the time they book. If I'm in debt by then, or have borrowed against my 401K in so doing, that matters not a fuck to me.

I can make that up when the kids are out of the house. Hell, almost two years into a 401K loan, I have paid myself back with an interest rate that has outperformed the funds that the plan pays into. So, I haven't even lost there, though I am perfectly willing to.

I say this while knowing that I have a decent amount accrued in various accounts (pension, 401K, life insurance, prepaid college program, other stocks, equity in my house). I do have some cards to play.

My advice is (for prospective parents), be as tight as you possibly can with your money before you have kids.... join into the 401Ks (maxing out the company contribution if there is one), get your life insurance... make sure all that is taken care of for when the bills start buzzing the tower like locusts the 18 years you have the kids in the house.

 

First, let me say that I'm not advocating going into debt. I'm in debt currently due to family health issues.

But I'll share this story. When I first bought my house, we had an elderly neighbor over. I told him how worried I was about being in debt with the mortgage. The neighbor replied: "At your age, everyone is in debt. You will look back at this day someday with fondness. This is the best time of your life."

 

Bought a condo in 2000 for roughly $98k. At the time the rates on the 30-year mortgage were 7.25%. In 2004 when the rates were extremely low I was able to refinance into a 15-year mortgage for 5.25% and my payment was only $100 more a month. The equity built up very quickly to the point where I was able to use the equity on a home equity line of credit that my wife & I used as the down payment for the townhome we bought.
Instead of trying to be suckered into various loan programs and whatnot we simply said we wanted a 30-year fixed rate. If rates stay low we can likely refi in a year or two, otherwise we'll just continue with the mortgage we've got, paying off a little extra principal each month.