The home buying simulation taught me about the options available for someone on a tight budget and how where one can afford to live correlates directly with their access to schooling. My annual income for the simulation was 24,000 dollars and therefore I had to be meticulous with every dollar I spent on rent. When looking online for homes to rent I quickly realized that because I did not have a lot of money to spend and because my spending window was quite small, I had few options. Buying a home was out of the question! I was forced to pick between a couple of apartments, and an even smaller amount that had three bedrooms. One interesting thing that I noticed was the plethora of “rent to own” type of offers. There was an effort to make home buying affordable for all income brackets. I found this interesting because there is status as a successful American attached to being a home-owner. Not far from Trinity was a home located at 57 Sumner Street. This home has access to many neighborhood public schools with varying levels of school success. This showed the direct correlation between home value and school success. Because in the activity I do not own a car, it is important to be within walking distance of the school. Although there are school buses, it is important to be close, in case any issue arises. The other apartment that was the most convincing is located at 881 Broad Street in Hartford. It is very close to the first apartment, making the school choices very similar. The observation that I made first had to do with the city versus suburbs debate. As someone who has grown up in a city all her life, and has never internalize a negative connotation with urban life, it was tough to put myself in a mental space where city equaled bad and therefore I had to move to the suburbs. That being said, with the amount of money that I was making in the simulation and without access to a car, it was nearly impossible to live in a suburb. While I would have had access to much better schools, the reality is that I couldn’t afford it.