Hi everyone. I appreciate different perspectives to help analyze my situation and work the links out of my plan. Some background first before asking. Currently debt free, got a 6 months of expenses saved and about 1 years worth of income in retirement accounts at age 30. Trying to keep up with some recommended markers you know. I’ve got about 8-12 years left in the military before retiring. With this time horizon, how would one prepare for home ownership? ETFs, Mutual Funds, CDs, Money Market? Would it be wise to pay cash for a house or just a 20% down payment? Keep up the great content Jeremy!! Thanks everyone.
Hey Alex!
When you say you have 8-12 years left in the military, does that mean you don’t expect to buy a house until you retire? (I think so, based on the title of the post!)
NORMALLY, I recommend saving for a home down payment in a regular savings account. Because NORMALLY people don’t plan that sort of thing 10 years in advance. It’s usually more like a year or two where the benefit of investing is very small and the risk of volatility is very high.
But if you’re really looking at a 10 year time frame, I would invest it! Maybe for your “home fund” it could be a slightly more conservative mix (say 50% stocks and 50% bonds) so if 10 years from now the market drops in half, your house fund is more stable.
It would need to be in a brokerage account (not an IRA or TSP) so you can access all the money when the time comes before you’re 59.5. I might even consider a target date index fund for 2030 or something like that. That will have everything you need inside of it, geared towards getting spent in 2030 
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Great insight!! Hadn’t thought to use target date funds.
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