u/JaBoiGerald

I'm renting a place by myself currently and am wondering if it would be worth looking into buying a home. A decent home around me goes for 200k but with given the current housing market, should I just hold off with my current rent price?

I feel stuck financially as I don't see an upward growth path for myself given the state of the job market.

I'm 24 living in the rural midwest (LCOL) making 80k/year. This is my 3rd year as a systems admin (first job out of college). My living expenses aren't overwhelming, and I'm currently able to invest ~$3200-$3500/month across all of my accounts. Things look good on paper, but I just don't see how to improve from here. Tech jobs are stagnated and I'm wearing multiple hats at work so I'm not particularly specialized in anything.

Everywhere online I see people constantly talking about making 6 figures or well into it, lots of them being in their 20s as well. In this way I feel like I'm starting to fall behind, even though my financials from an outside perspective probably look good. Is this a symptom of too much social media, or is there something I should be doing to improve my financial situation as I move throughout my 20s and into my 30s?

Currently work at a hospital on a small team. Well-versed in Citrix VDA & NetScaler, SQL Server, and Active Directory. Would like to get more specialized in databases or networking since my current workload is easily built for 2 people. For more information please message me, thanks.