What would you do if you were me right now?

[Ronald Russell]

My wife and I are looking to start our investing journey soon, but trying to decide what our particular starting strategy should be.

Currently, we live in a family owned house that we pay $1000 month with zero interest. We owe about $135k and house appraised for $190k. So in about 11 years the house will be payed off. (FYI we can’t rent out our current house until we either pay it off or get financing for it if we chose to.) Should we go ahead and finance the house now and get a heloc to have some capital to invest in properties, or take advantage of not having a mortgage with a lender and get a property? We only have a few thousand savings at moment (just got married). We make about $160k a year between us and credit situation is low 600’s at moment. Recovering from a layoff a couple years ago. Nothing bad on credit except medical bills. Only debt we have is student loans and one vehicle note. We plan to buy and hold single and multi family for cash flow.

What would you do? Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

RJ

[George W.]

My suggestion is to work on saving some more first. Have a good safety net, setup a good budget and follow it religiously. Work on improving your credit. Last thing you want to do is buy another place on heloc and then it goes vacant for a while or needs a major repair. I'm sure alot of people will say otherwise though.