funding and purchasing tactics

[Zach Rogers]

I am currently 19 years old and I have a MAD desire to be financially free. I use the phrase 'financially free' VERY lightly. I want to be financially free times infinity. It kills me sometimes going to bed number crunching and what ifs. I'm willing to sacrifice my time, body, friends, and sadly, family as I work to save up for my first purchase. I am hungry.

When I listen to podcasts or just read about people and when they started in real estate I always hear something along the lines of 'I bought a 100K house with 20% down and put about 20K of repairs into it.' 

I'm not doubting them as I completely believe their stories, it's the fact that they're just in their twenties when they are making these purchases. To me, I don't know many 21 year olds with 40 grand just sitting aside so I'm essentially asking for any tips or advice to funding my first investment or any tactics such as turnkey houses. With working long hour weeks until I graduate and start in my field I'm on track for my first investment somewhere around 4 years from today. 

As of Tuesday I am starting school in the aviation field. It's a 16 month program but I'm going to be working long hours on top of that and have a goal of 10k where I want my bank account to be at the end of the 16 months. If you're wondering why I'm going into the aviation field it's because it wasn't until after I signed up for the school I started researching real estate and reading books on it that I knew this is what I want to do full time hopefully before I'm 30. So I'm getting into the school and planning on coming out with a pretty good salary to fund my investments.