Buy your car for cash, out of pocket change.
Learn to maintain it yourself.
(It’s great to have rich friends who trade up often.)
Your house payment = one week’s take home pay.
Learn to maintain it yourself.
Plow every dime in, and don’t fix a dang thing until the house is paid for.
Can’t afford the area? Move
Taxes too high? Move
That “high-paying” job is only paying the taxes and all that required maintenance.
Anything else and you’re blowing smoke up your wah-zooo.
Live abundantly within your means.
Give generously with your heart.
Everyone else can go to H.E. double toothpick.
The owners of run down houses want top dollar for them when they want to move. Never understood that.