I'm a Newbie-Pay Down Debt or Start Investing??

[Tye Brooks]

Hi! I'm new to BP, super excited that I stumbled across this little nugget!

I have a questions for the pros out there. I was recently involved in an auto accident, which was definitely not the most fun thing I've ever done...but the outcome is that I should get a decent settlement out of it being that it wasn't my fault and I had some pretty bad injuries. 

My initial thought was, I'll pay off my car and my credit cards, finally have a decent "emergency fund" and be able to jump start a good savings plan for my daughters college fund. However, she's only 8 so I have a while. My wheels started spinning and I thought this would be a good opportunity to use that money (that I wouldn't have had otherwise) to start flipping real estate and multiply it several times over. My ultimate goal would be to generate enough passive income and retire myself before my 35th birthday (I'm just about to turn 27).

My question is....is it a bad idea to get into real estate investing while my personal debts are still high (and my personal credit isn't that amazing...about 610), or does it make more sense to invest and multiply it to give me more money to pay my personal debts?

If I'm going to do this I'd want to do it right....set up an LLC or S-corp (or both), get a website, management software, bandit signs, business cards...the whole 9 (unless you guys have some other advice on how to get started). I'd be appreciative of any insight.

Tye

[Andrew Syrios]

Personally, I would focus on paying down your credit card debt first at least, since that's such high interest. Maybe you can wholesale or partner with someone on real estate on the side. But credit card debt in particular is a killer and I think that should be your main target. As far as the car loan, that would depend on your interest rate. Those are my two cents at least.