Step 1: Approach a lender to get pre-approved for a mortgage.

Step 2: Celebrate, because in your mind, you are rich. You can afford to buy an 18-bedroom castle and still have money left over for a giant slide made of rainbows and happiness.

Step 3: Using internet real estate listings, select the houses you’d like to tour.

Step 4: Drive all over town looking at properties. Just for fun, go ahead and get your hopes up for that first showing. It will help make things more dramatic as you look at houses…

On sink holes:

In alligator nests:

And behind prison yards:

Step 5: Realize that you can’t afford anything you’d even let a pack of wild dogs live in, and give up. Decide to live in a refrigerator box instead.