[quote=rent4now]A better question would be why does she have only 10K saved when she has no rent or debt?
[/quote]

That was my first thought. How has someone who is making $2500/month only managed to save 10k if they have neither a rent/morgage payment, nor a car payment? Unless she has only been in this job for a year or two, she needs to question her spending habits.

Here is what I would do.

1)Find a place she would buy. Be honest, a place she could live in for more than a “year or two”.

2)Figure out how much that monthly morgage payment would be. Include taxes/HOA’s/Mello Roo’s/interior maintaince/ Insurance etc etc.

3) Force herself to save that payment every month for the next 6 months. I say 6 months for two reasons:
A) because itll be better to buy in the fall after some of this buyer crazyness has died down. Prices are still going down, so it isn’t gonna hurt her in the price tag.

B) because it is a long enough time frame that some of those ‘special’ charges that we so often never account for will show up. (You know; so and so’s wedding, or that trip to cancoon, or that new must have pair of shoes or what ever it is she spends her money on. She obviously isnt a huge saver assuming she has been doing this for more than two years)

IF she can live that way, she could start looking. She would have prob nearly doubled her cash position, and wont have to change her lifestyle too much.

IF she can’t live that way, she should thank her lucky stars she has the job she does and just keep living her life as a renter.

IF she fails to live that way but buys anyways, watch out for IF/WHEN? that GF becomes something more. One of the biggest reasons marriages fail is money and so far I have not heard anything that telling me she is very conservative with money.

(sorry for the relationship advice, everyone can hate on me if they want. I just dont want a good pigg to go down.)