becoming part time agent as a way to get started / pay off debt

[Ryan Blankenheim]

Hey everyone, I signed up on this site a while ago and haven't posted much but have been reading and listening to podcasts and I am ready to take some action.

A Little about me and my situation:

My wife is self employed and I do government work.  We make good money but we have been living beyond our means for quite some time.  We have debt north of 200k to include vehicles, student loans and credit card debt.  My wife and I love real estate and want to start investing but feel it would be unwise in our current financial situation.  We are not struggling to pay bills, we have gotten on a budget and are able to pay decent chunks of debt off when my wife takes quarterly "bonuses" out of her business.

I would like to accelerate our debt payoff and our thought is to obtain our RE licenses and work as agents part time as a "team" to accelerate our payoff with commissions and start learning more about the real estate business in the process.

I know that part-time agents are a debated topic on the forums but my question is this: Has anyone done this and would be willing to share their experiences? or, does anyone have other recommendations of part time work within the real estate world that could help me attain my goal of earning and learning at the same time, ie, appraisals or inspections?

Another option I guess would be to begin investing now to gain passive income to help pay debt off, but this seems like a stretch with the amount of personal debt we currently have.

Thanks