Time
/When you start saving is more important than how much you stash per month.
At a 7% interest rate (standard/baseline rate in the stock market) your investment doubles every 10 years.
At a 3% rate (standard appreciation in real estate) and ~80% financed, your investment/down payment doubles every 3 to 6 years.
And all appreciating assets grow exponentially. Einstein said the 8th wonder of the world was compounding interest. Time is your friend, it's like this constantly upward moving escalator, ya may as well step on now.
In fact, that’s one of the central reasons for creating this site - to educate young adults to be wise about money/investing at 20, rather than 40. Most people know this stuff at 40 or so, but they lost 20 years - this site was almost called smarteryounger.
Another point on this: Warren Buffett was/is certainly a great investor, but the main reason he’s worth $80 billion is because he started earning and investing at age 10 and he’s lived to 90 years old - so he’s had 80 years. Check out the film Becoming Warren Buffett.
Still not convinced? Let’s say at age 20 you started investing $1,000 a month and like Warren, did that for 80 years too (sorry, you gotta live to 100 now to match Warren - eat those veggies!). Let’s assume a 12% return, which IMHO is achievable with a mix of stocks and real estate. 80 years later - ta da, you’re a billionaire too! In fact it has less to do with how much you invest and more to do with when you start and what your rate is. Play with the numbers here.