What I've seen out there (I'm in the market to buy a house) there have been bidding wars already for some houses. I remember wanting to place a bid on a house and the broker coming back to me saying there were 14 bids on that house. Do you really want to make one on this house? I'm suprised that there are many people out there that are buying. I've seen houses that come on the market and get swooped away within the same week they post.
It's kinda scary and frustrating at the same time.

 

IMHO, prices in the 'nicer' parts of the bay area will not adjust downwards very much, if at all. There are tons of people in the bay area (and international and other parts of the US who like the bay area) with very strong cash flow who will purchase and bid prices back up the moment there is a dip. (manhattan is another example of a real estate market where this happens)

as for credit card bills... not everyone has em.. i use credit cards to get 5% cash back on purchase i would make anyway (like gas, groceries). my CCs are paid off in full every week. no friggin way i am giving away my money to anyone through interest charges and fees


back to the OPs question..

i highly recommend you continue living at home and work to keep your costs to a minimum, keep shoveling money into liquid investments like money market account, max out your ROTH IRA and 401k contributions.. doing this plus focusing on increasing your earnings is the best way to start off down the path to building wealth

my family is all overseas and my wife's family is in NYC. if i had the chance to live with my parents, her parents or some other close family member i had a good relationship with, you better believe i would take advantage of that opportunity for monster savings. if you live at home you could even potentially borrow your parent's vehicle and drive your costs down even further

it doesn't seem very cool to live at home but give it some serious though. it is the easiest way to save a ton of money

 

Speaking of home prices there are lots of great places to live in the country (Oregon, Utah, Carolinas and the South) where decent homes are still $150k-$250k like prices were here 20-30 years ago

Damn bay area.

 

My best advice would not to assume you will be getting a raise. Not trying to bring you down, I honestly hope you do get the raise, but definitely plan for the present first, then if you get the raise, adjust accordingly.

I'm saying this because in the current economy, some people are thankfull to have a job! I'm one of them as I barely escaped being laid off.....twice! Officially I was laid off after the second re-org but found another position within my department.

Hope for the best and plan for the worst, thats my motto.

Good luck!

 

To answer your question, if you can pay all your bills, save for retirement and regularly contribute to another savings account and still have money left over for fun stuff, then go for it.

If you cant save money after paying rent, bills, gas and food, dont move out unless your home life is really bad. Ive lived paycheck to paycheck in the past and it gets old real quick.

 

Yea, the way I worked it out...even with all bills paid and a 1000$ **** around budget per month, I would be able to put away like 15-20k a year. But if I stayed at home...I could invest probably like 50k a year. But then the question is, would I rather use that money and put it into equity in a condo or something? That way my money isn't going off into space, its going back into my own pocket (sort of). Although I suppose it would make more sense to save it over the years and invest and build it up and just straight up buy a place rather than pay the interest over all of those years....

 

stay at home keep your savings liquid (money mkt account, etc) and use it as a downpayment on a condo... build up a big enough down payment so that you can rent out the condo and use the rent to cover your mortgage. so basically you are getting some poor chump to pay for your mortgage for you. if you can save $50k each yr like you planned you could almost buy a new place every 2yrs (and have other people pay the mortgage for you!!!)

this is totally awesome way to go. if you moved out you would be the chump paying someone's mortgage instead of the getting someone else's money.

i hate paying for someone's mortgage. i would totally live at home if i could (i think i said this before already!)

 

there's the long term too. I don't know what your career is, but what if you go back to business school, law school, and need to put down $50k a year for school? How wise would a mortgage be then? Sell the property? But in the short term, 5 years, your real estate investment may depreciate (indeed a lot of people who bought a couple years ago, it did)

Don't want to jump to stuff until everything's stable in life.