•   Think about renting and saving instead of plunging into a starter home. It sounds like a great idea - get a foothold in the housing market and then trade up when the kids come along. The reality is you could simply get stuck with a dump with no place to go. If you can hold off, wait until you are ready to buy something large enough - or at least with some decent expansion potential - to meet your needs for at least ten years.

•   Get into a renovation mindset and think old instead of new. Greater Boston has seen relatively few new homes built over the past 25 years, and if anything, that trend is likely to get worse. Most of what's out there is aging to one degree or another - whether it's from the 1960s or the 1860s. That means you need to accurately tally how much additional cash you are going to have to pump in. My advice - make friends with a builder or contractor who can give you an accurate read and avoid wishful thinking.

•   Don't get stuck up on finding the perfect school district. If you can afford that $800,000 Cape in Wellesley, go for it. But if you are going to later wind up in bankruptcy and foreclosure, what kind of life lesson is that for the little ones? The quality of most the suburban school districts around here is fairly high compared to many other parts of the country. Just ask my wife, who grew up in the Youngstown area and has lot of horror stories to tell of her high school years.

•   If you are planning on having a family, research daycare costs before you buy a home. Unless grandma lives nearby and would love to spend her sunset years chasing around her preschool grand kids, you could be in for sticker shock. At one point my wife Karen and I had three in day care - the total bill was larger than our mortgage. Basically, it took the equivalent of a $50,000 to $60,000 a year job to pay for it.

That's all from me right now. What are your survival tips?