Advice for my situation

[Brandon Durkee]

Good Afternoon! 

This is officially my first post in the Bigger Pockets Forum.  I am looking forward to learning from the site and forums here! 

I am very new to real estate investing.  I came from your typical middle-class family that lives paycheck-to-paycheck.  I learned a lot from my parents, but a solid financial education was not one of them. 

A couple of years ago I decided I wanted more for my life and embarked on a personal development journey.  Along the way I discovered Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the rest is history.  I have decided that I want to give real estate investing a shot!  I have spent many months reading, listening to, and learning about real estate investing.  I feel I have a pretty solid base when it comes to technical knowledge, but I know there is much more to learn. 

Anyway, the point of my post is to get advice on my current situation and the early stages in my plan to start investing.  I unfortunately do not have anybody in my personal circle I can bring this to, which is why I am here.  I do hope to change that through networking and real estate investing clubs. 

I am 28 years old. 
Employed full-time with $100K annual income 
Net: 6K per month
Fixed monthly expenses: $1,800 
Cash on hand: 20K 
Total Debt: 42K 

A few years ago, I messed up my credit and defaulted on a few credit cards that were sent to collections.  My current credit score is 630. 

With all that being said, my plan: 

1. Learn as much as possible about RE investing 
2. Continue to work on my credit score, my goal is to get it over 700 in the next 6-9 months.  I have hired a credit repair company that is working on getting the collections accounts removed from my report. 
3. I have officially paid off all credit card debt. 
4. Continue to pay my debt off.  The remaining is a car payment and student loans.  My plan is to snowball the debt and apply big payments in order to pay it all off within the next 2 years. 
5. Continue to save.  I am currently averaging $1,200 saved per month. 
6. I am aiming toward making my first investment a househack and finding a duplex or tri-plex.  I want to turn the other unit(s) into short-term rentals. 

I am also currently doing rental arbitrage and have cashflowed about $500 per month on a 1 bedroom unit. I actually did not intend to make much money with this. I did it so I could learn more about STR as I want to have a good portion in my eventual portfolio and really love hospitality. I have learned a ton about Airbnb, VRBO, etc. I have a 5-star rating and am a qualified Super Host. I am really enjoying it and learning a lot.

I feel like in 6-9 months I will be in a better position to actually make a move to invest.  Do you feel like this plan and path that I am on is a good path?  Is there anything else I should be doing or not doing in order to position myself well to start investing?  

I want to say thank you all so much for taking the time to read my post and reply!  It is much appreciated! 

Sincerely, 

Brandon