When it comes to accommodation you have to choose houses that you can afford because it is a recurrent expenditure. Some persons make the mistake of borrowing to get a house only to struggle later to renew the rent. The only option you have is to increase your income or manage what you can afford. I had to move to another house to reduce my cost of living.
I can afford a more expensive house, the issue is that I'd prefer not to spend a large portion of my salary just to accomondate myself. You can never predict what may happen in a year or two. I wouldn't want to get stuck in a house I may not be able to afford in case something happens and I'm out of work, or is simply becoming a financial burden in the long-run.
The increase of these natural disasters makes life very uncertain. The Libyan flooding gives me so much concern because it was caused by negligence and my country has some dams that have not been maintained for a long time. It will not be a surprise if such a disaster occurs.
The governments haven't taken the necessary precautions to minimize the effects of such phenomeno, however, the root of this issue is that as the years progress, we're going to face a lot extreme weather conditions more often than we're used to.
I used to be like that in my "youth" and it was a good thing to be stressing about these things, at least for me. It made me learn the value of money and most importantly to
plan ahead financially speaking.
You've already the first step correctly by thinking about these things but of course you have to try not to get overly anxious. Don't worry about making mistakes, after all you're at the beginning of your journey in life and even mistakes are a valuable experience.
I can't tell
you what to do because the situation is different in different countries and different times. But I can tell you what
I did.
I basically went on a very "strict financial mode" where I wrote down all my little expenses and little incomes. I worked hard and earned as much money as I could then made
wise investments while controlling my expenses. That helped me maximize the amount of money I saved up (income, interest, passive income, profit).
I have to emphasize that writing down stuff helped a lot, as it is not enough to just be "careful about expenses". It helps a lot to be able to visualize and analyze your expenses (and incomes). For example at the end of the month you can look back and see for example you wasted money somewhere that could be avoided or better spent. I even have a little excel file that dates back 20 years
Not to mention that it helps you to stay organized a lot better and if you set targets for yourself, it also helps you reach those targets and feel "optimistic" about your future as you would be going through life according to your plan or at least closes to your plan as possible.
Speaking of planning ahead and setting targets one of the things I did was to figure out what would be the biggest expense I would have in my life and in my country it is rent. For example today as an engineer if I had to rent an apartment specially in the capital, that would eat at least 50% of my salary.
Knowing that, my goal became to eliminate that cost. The solution was to buy a house so that became the plan. I eventually saved up enough money to be able to buy my first apartment. It didn't have to be a fancy one or a big one but it helped me eliminate a large expense. That's extra money in my pocket which I were able to save or invest to improve.
This is actually some great advice and it's confident to know that there are others who share a similar mindset to mine. Yes, I tend to worry quite a lot, but it's because I want to be a responsible adult with a settled life, and want things done in a proper way. I know plenty of other students from my university that are still jobless, living with their parents and literally not worrying about their life, this isn't something I'd ever want.
Although I'm relatively careful with my money, writing down my expenses would allow me to scroll through the end of the month and see were I spent money that I could have avoided. Now that I've mentioned it, I could probably have avoided making that order from Temu, or buying something just because it was on sale. Writing down is the key to keep track of everything, whether it's money or a reminder.