Need honest advice on the first step in real estate investing.

[Daniel Adema]

Hello everyone!

This is my first post on this site, so hopefully I posted in the right area. If not, admin please let me know where I should do it.

My wife and I are looking at making our first real estate investment outside of our primary residence. While I am being extremely cautious, I do not want to "analyze until I'm paralyzed" on deals. Here's my situation:

Wife and I are early 40's. We have about 6k in self directed IRAs and about a liquid 20k to invest. Where should we start? Should we focus on rapidly growing our cash, or "seed" as I call it, and try to do wholesale deals and fix-and-flips and grow our seed to a much larger amount before buying rentals, or should we invest all of our "seed" now and buy and hold rental property and focus on cash flow and appreciation on that house? Is there a smarter way to do it that I'm not seeing? Should we focus on notes instead of real estate?

We have a crushing burden of student loans, but I have determined that growing my assets is a much better plan than spending my capital on reducing those loan balances.

I'd love to hear honest experiences, opinions, and feedback and from those that have gone before me. It's taken me a while to realize this, but the decisions I make today directly affect the life the 50, 60, and 70 year old me is is going to live, so I need to make the best and most informed decision for their sake.