Samantha came prepared with a lot of good questions, and Paco was more than ready to offer straight-forward explanations of many of complicated home-buying terms that trip up many first-time buyers. How long do you need to stay in a house to make sure it's a good investment? What is equity? And Paco gets really nerdy about fully-amortized loans . (I promise it's not complicated — or boring!) We also get into the tough question of how much house you can really afford. If you're trying to figure that out, we recommend using an online mortgage calculator to get a better sense of how your down payment can impact your monthly payments. Then it can be helpful to think about your 50/30/20 plan and see if you feel comfortable with that amount of debt.