Extra costs for grabbing a fast dinner of morning coffee instead of cooking because of the long commute.When you add in the extra costs, often your house hold budget will remain the same whether you buy the expensive/close house or the far out cheap house, just instead of higher housing costs you have higher auto/child care/food costs.Plus when you add in the part of your life you loose sitting on the freeway, instead of at your kid's T-Ball game, and your composure when coming home after battling traffic, stressed, etc. you are really giving up a lot of your life.I have had life with a 3 hour commute each way, and the ten minute commute. 

@Nathan Witte The first thing you could do is connect with a local agent and get some auto emails set up and have them looking out for discounted properties in good areas.

I have minimal “bad debt” some auto loans and a personal loan but surly want to have little to no debt ASAP

I do the same when i get a mortgage I set it up auto pay and usually round up to the next thousand and pay at least 500 a month extra.. this saved my bacon in 2010 after being hammered so badly in the GFC..

Investment Info:

Single-family residence other investment in Columbus.

Purchase price: $65,000

Cash invested: $4,896

Accidental investment when the original purpose of the buy didn't work out 6 month...

I would recommend you have a rain day fund prior to starting with at least 3-6 months of cash saved.In addition, have little to no credit card debt or auto loans. 

CPA software defaults/auto-populates to 365, and your CPA left that default value in for whatever reason.

Currently she only has an auto loan.

February 2019 at the age of 62 I accidently came across a screaming deal.

It was an accident at first, but thanks to BP we are capitalizing and not looking back!