You should only buy mortgages if you know how the equity game is played. Only buy in up and coming areas. GTFO after 3 years living in it to dodge the capital gains tax liability. Make sure your credit is solid to get as low of an interest rate as possible.

Oh, and make ABSOLUTE sure your house doesn't have maintenance issues (get an extremely good inspector before buying that can say point out when an ac unit is about to die), maintenance and yard menaces (trees mostly) will fuck you harder financially than anything ever. I know, I used to be in a mortgage myself.

The job market is a giant mirage right now. Boomers generally think it's great right now because of the "help wanted" signs and all of the job postings on Indeed and what not. What they don't realize is that the Indeed/linkedin listings are 90%+ fake job postings meant for data farming, and whatever real job postings remain have thousands of applicants per job (likely mostly bots but they do a good job of overwhelming hiring managers and hurting the real job hunters). Those "help wanted" signs SEVERELY underpay their workers or have some other internal issues going on.