The reality is if you bought at least 3 years ago, it's likely the value of your home has doubled already, putting your equity equal to your debt, without even accounting for mortgage payments in the meantime.

And if I didn't? Given the absolutely asinine bubble causing the cost of housing increase over the last three years, alongside the spike in interest rates, can you honestly say the value of a home will keep going up? Fwiw the estimated price of my place has dropped 20% since I bought it. I don't think this bubble is sustainable. The cost of rent has risen absurdly with no real cause.

Oh you might also be interested to know that less-than-5k figure is about equivalent to what I can save every year as a renter. Except that's just my rainy day fund and it gets spent on extraneous costs and I hardly actually save anything at all. So you're sitting pretty over there, despite your whining.

Yeah that's fair. As I said earlier, I hope you're able to advance or switch your career to get to a better place. Many of my friends got jobs at the local uni to leverage the tuition assistance towards a practical degree to work towards a career change/advancement, and there's also the trades if you're able-bodied enough.