Adulting 101 Part 3
Welcome to Part 3 of " Why Did No One Tell Me?!? " or, " What High School Should Have Taught Me. " ( Part 1 is here. ) Buy a house. You need to live somewhere, right? It seems obvious and an oft mentioned part of The American Dream, but if you're like me, you grew up in an apartment. If high school taught how to get from living with your parents to moving into your own home, I must have been sick that day. Besides what we learned in Part 2 about needing good credit , I was 25 years old before I heard anyone mention that the typical down payment for a home is 20%. To give you an idea of size of that challenge: According the the U.S. census , the median price for a new home in the U.S. is $315,100, so 20% of that is $63,000!! By the time I realized this, I had already been in the workforce for 9 years, and had saved nothing toward that - overly concerned with paying off student loans quickly, which I also discussed in Part 2. Another thing I ha...