@Adamlett If, at any point in time, you have enough that you don't want to be wiped out, you can buy insurance (we did eventually get a house for something like $75k and I believe we had it insured). If for some reason we couldn't afford it and had to sell the house, we'd have $75k, which is enough to live on for a while even with no income (after graduating, I lived on ~$12k/yr).