There is no universal answer, but two lenses get you most of the way there. The first is immediate and personal. Buying roughly doubles your housing cost today in exchange for more space, a garage, a safer area, better schools, and the satisfaction of owning. Only you can price what those are worth to your family. The second is the long-term math: - A 30-year fixed locks your principal-and-interest payment for the life of the loan, even if you never refinance. Rents have historically climbed over time, and even a modest annual increase compounds into a much larger payment a decade or more out. - Equity builds from two directions. Modest home-price appreciation plus the principal you pay down each month means a chunk of that higher payment comes back to you as equity. Those outcomes are illustrative, not promises. Neither rents nor prices move on a schedule. If you keep renting, the discipline that makes it work is actually investing the monthly difference, for example in a 401k, IRA, or Roth IRA (Roth contributions, though not the earnings, can generally be withdrawn for a first home), rather than absorbing it into everyday spending. To see which path pencils out on your real numbers, that is exactly what the free Roadmap conversation is for: about 20 minutes where we run your actual figures.