28 soon-to-be 29, just now entering the workforce, no savings but also no debt, where do I even start to begin building my future?

Planning

Long story short, originally graduated with a computer science degree in 2020, unfortunately during my last semester of college I developed some serious health issues, and despite being able to graduate, I was not able to work for years.

I am very fortunate due to the fact that my parents are older and both have pensions (former govt workers), so I was able to mooch off of them for the time being, and I was able to get scholarships when I was in school, so I was able to pay what little student debt I had working construction during the summers.

My health problems fortunately cleared up ~1.5 years ago, and when I started improving, assuming that no one would hire a software developer 5 years out of college with no experience, I decided to go back to school and got an associate's degree in nursing.

I recently just started my first job and work the nightshift/weekend, so with pay differentials I make $40/hr. I do live in a place that isn't that great for nursing pay-wise, so once I hit 1 year of experience I plan on moving to another state that has better wages (The state I'm looking at would pay roughly $42/hr so potentially $50+/hr with differentials).

I also have a girlfriend who is a nurse, and we will likely (hopefully) get married at some point.

Basically, to lay out my goals and the reason for this post:

-Obviously no savings as my age is bad, but I assume also having no debt levels that out a bit?

-Ideally I would like to move out of my parents' house as soon as possible, and with my salary I could technically afford to do so now, but I assume in my situation it would be smarter to just stay with them for the next year and just save?

-Assuming me and my girlfriend get married, we would probably start thinking about having kids in around 3-4 years and would ideally like some type of starter home by then (the place we would potentially move to that would be roughly ~300-350k, but obviously that may change in 3-4 years), is that a reasonable timeframe if we work enough overtime and budget hard enough? Or should we temper our expectations?

I'm sure I have more to add, so I will add it under here when it comes to mind.

TLDR: 28-year-old dude who is just now getting his life on track, looking for some general advice and reassurance on building my future life.

Posted Jun 3, 2026, 11:47 PM UTC

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