To invest or To continue waiting..

[Kyle Falkenstein]

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to get my real estate investing hat back on, however I'm hitting some personal roadblocks. Let me start off with saying I don't want to share this information for someone to ridicule me, tell me how I'm financially screwing myself, or any other degrading comments. I am just trying to see if there is a more creative way to get capitol to invest or if I should even be investing at all with my situation.

SITUATION: I am currently an Active duty military member that has recently went through a divorce again and absorbed $30k in credit card debt that is now about to be in collections, I am having to pay $1000/month in child support for my son, and due to previously losing income and having to start saving for a nest egg of transitioning out of the military, I had to Voluntarily repo my vehicle and get a beater which has made my credit score take a nose dive to the mid 500's (I used to have 740-760 before all this divorce stuff happened). I currently live and own a 3/2 SFR (owned it for about 1.5 years) with mortgage of $845/moth, and house hacking having a roommate that is paying me $610/month (includes half of average utilities). After getting money taken away from me I am slowly recovering my nest egg and emergency fund that I had to drain due to unexpected issues and expenses (when it rains it pours). Now my girlfriend and I are both in love with real estate, she has recently become a real estate agent (I will be following suit this fall starting school to become one as well) and we both understand the amazing investment vehicle RE can be. Lastly, her and I both currently lack capital to put money down on any kind of loan whether that be HML, PML or traditional. My question for everyone is, Do we just sit and squirrel away money to hopefully build up enough capital to put the typical 10-20% down for loan while simultaneously fixing up my current property to prep it for being a STR, LTR or for sale eventually down the road OR is there someone out there that has way more creative thinking than we do to start our real estate investing journey with little to no money down (yes we have tried to reach out to friends and family to see if they would partner on possible deals).

Thank you in advance for any input!