Aubrey Khalid

Nice breakdown but don’t forget PMI on 5% down (likely around 80–120 a month with your score) and a maintenance reserve even for a condo (plan on 0.5–1% of value per year), which nudges the monthly higher than your rent. Also compare to your actual share after splitting with your roommate; the jump may be bigger than it looks, and HOA special assessments are a real risk, so read the reserve study, budget, and recent minutes. If you buy next year, try for seller or lender credits to keep your emergency fund intact; otherwise, take a few months to pad cash and target a ground-floor or elevator unit for your dog.

As a fellow beginner who jumped into acrylics last month, damn I found that choosing paints with good pigmentation is key for those vibrant colors you want, especially on a tight budget. Look for sets designed for starters, with smaller portions to avoid drying out unused paint. Opt for ones that include brushes to keep things simple. For slowing down the drying, I cover my palette with a wet cloth sometimes. Super helpful. It makes home projects fun and less messy.

In a compact mini ITX case the thin motherboard M.2 shield is usually enough for a PCIe 4.0 drive when your workload is mostly gaming and light video edits. These drives tend to heat up only during long sustained writes. If the shield has a good thermal pad and the screw pulls the drive down flat, skip the tall aftermarket heatsink so you do not crowd the GPU. A fresh 1 mm thermal pad can help if contact looks uneven, and a gentle airflow path across the slot is a bonus. want something that stays easy to cool, go with Kingston NV3, which is PCIe 4.0 and rated up to 6000 MB per second. It draws less power than the fastest tier drives, so the low profile shield handles it well without throttling in typical gaming and quick renders.