How much house could i afford? -

I am going to become a pharmacist when I am about age 23. I want to marry when I am 24 or even 25. I want to know how much years I should invest money and when should I buy a house for my family. I know that pharmacists make about 100-140k since I am going to put some extra hours to earn more money. I want to buy at least a pretty luxurious or Victorian style house. I also want to make sure that I don t spend all of my money on a house because I want to enjoy life also. I want to move to Long Island, West Chester or even buy a great house in NYC Queens if they have one. What prices should I get and how many years should it take to realistically buy a nice house. Please give me good advice. Thanks.|::::|There is no guarantee you will make half what you anticipate. Just because you have a degree doesn t mean you ll get a job in that industry. So before you get a nasty slap in the face from reality, don t factor in earnings you might make in the future. Nobody s life works out how they plan. I have 2 degrees and I don t work in the industry I trained for. Your best bet is to save some money now. Invest it in a mutual fund. Save at least 10% of your income and earmark that for quot;house depositquot;. Then, when you finish college and you are lucky to get a job, you might have a better idea of what sort of place and what sort of suburb you can live in. You might have to buy a house in a really unpleasant area and move your way up. Don t expect to buy your forever home straight up. As for prices, you can look at those suburbs on real estate websites and you ll get an idea of what you ll pay for properties in those areas. You will need at least 20% deposit of the price of the home. So if you are buying a home worth $250 000, you will need at least $50 000 saved straight up. But I d go for more. If you have any less than 20% of the purchase price as the deposit, you need to pay mortgage insurance, which protects the bank (not you) against your defaulting. It doesn t go towards your mortgage. It just pays the insurance company so that the bank takes on a poor risk (you, the lender with less than a 20% deposit). If you start at the bottom, and buy a very cheap house in a cheap neighborhood, and pay it off quickly (that is, pay far more than your minimum repayment, so that you get rid of the loan before it costs you a lot of interest) you can then either sell that house and make a profit, or use the equity in the house as a downpayment to buy another property. Since you ve been living in the house, you won t have been paying rent, so all the money you contribute to the loan will go to clearing the debt, and basically into your pocket when you sell. When you sell, you can rent for a while and then use the proceeds of the sale as a downpayment on another, better home. That is the easiest way to do it. Don t expect to just walk into a great job when you graduate, and don t expect that you ll get the house of your dreams straight up. It can take decades to work your way up the job ladder to get to a position where you earn that kind of money. I work 2 jobs to pay my house off in 5 years, so I can buy a better house. We only borrowed a small amount, because we saved a deposit that was 30% of the price of our property. Check out property websites for properties in that area, so you ll know what kind of money you re looking at. Then, save at least 20% of that amount as your deposit. Until you ve saved that money, it s no use looking for houses. Then, when you ve saved it, start looking for houses, and banking any extra savings you make while you house hunt as emergency savings so if you have a disaster and can t work, or you need to pay for building and pest inspections when you buy, you have the money. There are a lot of hidden costs with property purchases, like stamp duty and taxes and rates. It s not just the price on the ad.|::::|maybe 2