My Taurus once broke down on the side of the road last summer, which then prompted me to decide to buy a new car within a year. I went test-driving and truly enjoyed almost everything about the Mazda3.

I liked it, and if I was excited at all at the idea of buying a car, that would be it.

But I wasn't, and I'm still not, months later, excited about buying a car. My Taurus, albeit old with a bumper that looks like it's been beaten on the mean streets of Richmond, still works just fine. Sure, you have to floor the gas to go, but he still goes. And I'm getting weirdly sentimental about him anyways. Despite looking like an old cop car/old man car, it will always be my first car.

So I've put off buying a car because buying a car is hard and I just wasn't into it. It felt like a commodity purchase that I simply just didn't need.

Flash forward to last month

I have known for pretty much this entire lease that it was probably my last year living with roommates. I just felt like I was old enough and financially stable enough to go for it alone. So I begin to look at renting single apartments online.

And hot damn, it's expensive. For a measly 450 square feet, I was looking at price tags starting around $800, not including utilities. For apartments with a more livable square footage, I was well over a thousand, some without utilities still.

I am financially stable from when I started saving for my new car, but not into flushing money down the drain. And renting is a waste of money. That's actually a really good adult lesson I've learned:

Renting is a waste of money

Renting is a waste of money because you're building no equity, you're investing in nothing and you will never recoup that money. You're just throwing money away, which is exactly what I thought about buying a new car when you have an old car that still runs.

It was this realization that caused my next, even more adult-like decision: I am going to buy a house. I very casually started looking online at houses and then started to play with mortgage calculators and had the lightbulb moment where I realized that, not only can I actually afford to buy a house, but that it would be a really good idea.

I'm going to be staying in Richmond for the foreseeable future, I have good credit, I have money for a down payment, and I am at a level of maturity where I feel comfortable actually owning something of my own. This will be my opportunity to have roots again and feel connected to a community: to actually have a house where I care about what it looks like and feel excited to unpack.

I almost chuckle to myself because a $20,000 purchase of a car repulsed me, but the anticipation of closing on my exponentially more expensive townhouse purchase makes me overjoyed for my future.

I'm also really excited to share this journey with you, and I've got a lot to say about it. In the coming weeks, I'm going to share more about financing my house, building a relationship with my realtor, finding the perfect house and the exact moment I had the epiphany that the house I now have under contract was the very house I needed.

It's been a whirlwind spin into adulthood, but one unlike anything I've ever had before. And I couldn't be happier for it.