I caught the housing bug from an eighth year associate who thinks she is going to make partner. She thinks she is cute making comments about how she was being promoted at the expense of her ovaries. I thought such hackneyed cliches only existed in the nail polish smeared pages of a Lisa Scottoline novel. However I decided against it based oddly enough not on student debt but on what it might mean for my love life.

A dental hygienist friend of mine made a killing about two years ago buying stocks short. Being the responsible type she bought a house and immediately saw her love life shrivel and die until she started referring to her house as her parent’s house…parents who were mysteriously never there.

When a man is unemployed his ability to start or maintain a family is compromised.  What about when he has substantial student loans? Even taking a best case scenario, borrowing money to go to school and the loan payments eating into your first paychecks pushes out the timetable for buying that first house and accumulating equity and wealth. Even if that time is only 5 years, and your rent only $1000 a month that’s $60,000 added to your debt.

Now things could be much worse. You could be Benito building a house out of sticks in his mother’s backyard, desperately waiting for the dorms to reopen after a roof collapse due to record snowfall. This is a pitfall of the successful debtor…It doesn’t make sense to pay rent into your thirties.

Now I know what you’re thinking. I just said I wasn’t going to buy a house. But I am also in my early twenties. I don’t want to miss out on meeting my Simon because my house subconsciously reminds him of his depleted ability to provide despite his six figure job, shiny car, and flatscreen TV. Taking another page out of SG’s book… She may not have a house but she certainly is not paying rent. In the meantime I think I will buy some stocks and deduct recent repairs from my next rent check. It’s a start people.

Oops. I forgot. The Associate with the shriveled ovaries. She is getting laid off next month after she closes on her house. If I meet someone special maybe we will buy her house for cheap after the bank seizes it.