I'm going to slightly hijack this post with a question of my own.
I'm currently sitting at a net worth of around -$9,000. For that, I blame years of non-Mustachian living, and facepunch-worthy decisions. But I'm making excellent progress. This year alone, I've increased my net worth by almost $100,000 by paying down debt and increasing tax-advantaged savings. All told, I have about $63,000 in student debt left to pay off (refinanced with SoFi with a rate of 2.23 percent and a monthly payment of about $1,200). Due to a high income job -- which I don't exactly loath, but cannot see myself doing for more than 18 to 24 months more -- I am able to pay about $10,500 a month on that student loan, without really impacting my quality of living at all.
My question is this: there are three-unit buildings on the market in my area (Chicago) that go for about $500,000-$525,000 range. Using very conservative estimates for things like rental increases, maintenance/insurance/taxes, occupancy rates, property appreciation, and such, the "nicer" of the three-unit places would actually take less out of my pocket each month than I am currently paying in rent -- somewhere between $50 and $100 less a month, depending on utilities, etc.
Now, I don't really have money available for a down payment. There is roughly one year's worth of expenses (about $24,000) in very safe investments, but if I started paying the minimum amount on my student loans, I could have enough cash to close at a ten percent down payment level (plus closing costs) together in less than six months. Or I could wait longer, and save up twenty percent -- the numbers work either way, even with the higher interest rate that comes with the smaller down payment.
So, assuming the numbers make sense (and I've been running them for weeks, looking for errors, and they really seem like the make sense even in the most conservative case) would you guys do it? By "it" I mean start putting the extra $$$ that are currently going into student loan payments into a savings account. I'm of course leaving some money on the table (essentially the difference between the interest rate on the loan versus the interest rate on the savings account), but if I decide that I just really hate my student loans that much once the minimum down payment is saved up, I can reverse course and end up "losing" less than a thousand bucks.
Am I crazy here? Is this blatantly un-Mustachian? Thoughts?