Good morning...I'm brand new and looking to start my real estate investing career.  I've been listening to the podcasts and I've been trying to figure out what method would be best suited for me to begin with given my situation.  I am currently trying to build my accounting practice with partners, but am not passionate about that business.  My short-term goal (1-2 years) is to earn enough through real-estate investing so that my wife can quit her job and then my next goal would be to replace my current income so that I can sell my part of the practice and focus full-time on real estate.  Looking at 3-5 years for that one.  I want to create a stream of passive income through a rental portfolio, starting out with small houses to figure it out and then transition into multi-family as time progresses.  I also want the chunks of income that flips generate so that I can build up a cash reserve to self-fund my deals at some point.  

Current financial situation is that we don't have any reserves to spare for investing.  No credit cards to be able to draw from either.  That's part of the reason why I want to start to create multiple streams of income for the family....I'm tired of never having any extra.  I've got two kids (15, 17) and as you guys know those ages are pretty expensive and only getting worse.  I need to create more income for the household to help with the stress that is coming that goes with that.  

So, where to get started....that is the question.  I've got a great contact with a hard money lender so if I wanted to do flips I guess I could start with that.  I've thought about just trying to start out as a wholesaler, but it seems like finding the deals for wholesaling are pretty difficult.  I wouldn't mind hooking up with a flipper in my area and having them give me search criteria that they want and me doing the leg work on finding them.  Maybe I should just try and find wholesalers in my area and get properties from them and use my hard money lender contact to start out doing a flip?  Not sure.

Any direction/advice would be greatly appreciated.  Looking forward to this new adventure.