Thanks
@waltworks -- I was offline for a few weeks and so just saw this now.
Good rules of thumb: Prioritize the life you want to live over your surroundings. And spend money to get what you need for the life you are living now, not the life you may be living at some point in the future. Always start with what is free, and see how much you can accomplish with that; spend money when you have demonstrated that that doesn't work, not when you suspect it won't.
IOW: if you want a baby, have a baby! Don't tie that decision to a new house. That puts
way too much pressure on the housing decision, because you have now framed it as the No. 1 thing keeping you from reaching your goal of having a family. If the goal is family, then work on that.
Once you have the baby, you can see if the apartment works or if it is too small. You can also see how mat leave pay works with your budget, how much baby "things" are costing, whether/when you want to go back to work and part-time or full-time, how much daycare is, etc. That will give you a much better view of how much you actually want to spend on housing given all your other goals, and the size home and type of neighborhood you want to live in with junior.
The problem with reaching your stage of adulthood -- several years working, decent careers, stable relationship, etc. -- is you start to think it's time to flesh out all those pretty pictures in your head of the life you dreamed of and have been saving for. Babies, houses, cars, vacations, etc. But the risk is that you end up focusing on things that don't actually suit your needs in the end, because of course when you had all those dreams, you didn't have the experience to understand what they cost and what all the tradeoffs are.
That's why I start with the general principles above, because it helps you approach those kinds of decisions where there's a big emotional tug to make a particular choice. If you focus on your personal priorities first, and then use your money to get you what you need instead of trying to satisfy all the things you want, you buy yourself a lot more freedom to live the life you want with the people you want.