If you are going to go the home ownership route, by all means avoid the 30-year fixed mortgage -- even with lower interest rates. So lets say you buy a $200K h

If you are going to go the home ownership route, by all means avoid the 30-year fixed mortgage -- even with lower interest rates. So lets say you buy a $200K house on a 30-year, 20% down. If you take the monthly payments, plus property tax and insurance, you could pay down a 90 - 100K condo within 5 years. Then sell it and use that as a down payment on a $160k house (so again borrowing only 60K) and pay that off in anther 5 years. By years 11-15 you could live in a $200 house and have it payed off in 5 years, instead of starting off with that house and having only half the mortgage payed down by then. The best part of this, is you are protected from the market going up or down. So say the market tanks, and your initial house loses value after 5 years. The worst thing is that you are living in a paid off house. The best part -- the next house you wanted to move up to is probably cheaper as well, so it balances out. And if the market goes up, well that means that you can sell your initial house for much more, increasing the down payment on the next bigger house.