What I often see is people who think their time window is 3 years like you are thinking here, it turns out to be 4 or even 5, or longer. It happened to me with a house we bought. We figured it was temporary and we'd upgrade, we stayed 12 years. You are imagining the worst case but not thinking of the best case. You should think of BOTH. Plan for the worst, but hope for the best. You don't mention the current income or potential future income in this scenario. All of this matters in personal finance. And again, fear should not drive a decision, planning should.