How should I get started to reach my goals?

[Dakota Ochoa]

Hello all! I’ve learned quite a bit about real estate investing and many different strategies but I’m having a hard time deciding which strategy is best for me to start with. I don’t have a whole lot of spare time, and I don’t have savings. But I do have good credit. The plan is to use my home equity to get started, but I don’t know if I should start with fix and flip, or rentals. I want to accumulate enough cash flow through multi family to be able to leave my job and focus on investing full time. But I feel like fix and flips could get me out of my job faster. So should I start with fix and flips and just pay someone with part of the first loan to oversee the first project, and then use profits from there on out to pay someone until i leave my job? Thanks for the feedback in advance!

[Joe Villeneuve]

That's not really a plan.  A plan is how you're going to get there.  A plan should be a series of steps with each step having an entrance and exit...and I'm referring to your money here.  Each Entrance should be planned with the exit in mind, and each exit must be set up to lead into the next entrance (plan) seamlessly.  To design this plan, it's best to reverse engineer it from your ultimate goals, back to where you are now.

Don't get so focused on getting there so fast that you make rash/poor decisions.  You'll end up rationalizing your way into bad (very bad) deals that will have a domino effect on all future deals.  Let the numbers guide you.  The numbers don't lie...so don't argue with them...you'll lose all the time that way.