Hindsight is always 20/20. Have all of your stocks gone up. Have all of your employment opportunities worked out exactly the way you thought. Hopefully they ahve. My experience tell me that it is challenging to predict. My experiencees all tell me that if I have an indefitite timeline than long term purchases have a way of paying off. Therefore we can only do our best to work withing the 2 constraints we have. The amount that we can afford, and the time we can afford it.