Paying off my primary residence first?

[Miles Stanley]

Hello

My fiancé and I are excited about getting into REI. Currently we are considering buy and hold rentals and/or flipping. Before the RE discussion came about, we had decided it would be a good idea to pay off all of our debt first (1 vehicle and primary residence mortgage) before getting into the RE game.

I would like to ideally use cash to fund my first deal as a lot of the financing options (HML, PML, HELOC, HEL, etc.) seem pretty risky for a beginner. The benefits of these methods of finance are always showcased, but there are a lot of cons to using them as well. I'm worried that, as a beginner, if I screw up I might find myself in a real pickle if using a more risky financing vehicle.

OR maybe play it safe until we get our feet wet and then look at expanding into other finance options later?

My fiancé is anti-debt (and frankly I don’t blame her).  I see the benefits of leveraging to expand quickly, but the comfort level is not quite there starting out.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks,