I'm not financially illiterate, but my family struggled my entire life. I budget. Currently, I save 18% of my gross income. I'm trying to do better, but the idea of homeownership is something that I'm not all together comfortable with. The amount of debt and everything that comes with it, but at the same time, I see rich white folks starting to come into the neighborhood...

Anyways, I've been looking at buying at house using a first time home buyers program to get a house before gentrification pushes all the poor black and ethnic folk out, for a few months. It's already started to happen and particularly, for the location I want, I need to act fairly quickly, if I'm going to make it happen.

What do I need to do? What do I need to know? What do I need to be aware of? How do I know much house I can afford? How much should I allow my student loans to factor into this? What resources can I turn to?

It sounds like your other post I should be looking for a 70K house that I can comfortably afford in case something pops up, I can roll with the punches fairly easily, but 70K doesn't go far where I'm at. Or maybe I just don't know how to look.