You could get a place that isn&#x27;t a &quot;fixer upper&quot;. If there is grass, let it grow three feet high.<p>&gt; <i>Taking compound interest into account, buying a house when your young amounts to flushing hundreds of thousands of dollars down the toilet.</i><p>It really depends. Rent is also money down the toilet.<p>If you&#x27;re &quot;old&quot; now, and you bought a house when you were &quot;young&quot;, and properties have gone up in your area, then if you still have the mortgage, the remaining payments are probably very low compared to what people are paying in rent.<p>Rents don&#x27;t have compound interest but they rise up and up over the years and decades. And every single dollar is wasted.<p>Of course, the specific reasoning depends on the area, especially over shorter terms.