How much is too much to get your feet wet

[Zachary Hora]

My name is Zachary Hora and I am 22 years old. I've been weighing out options after studying real estate investing for the past year or so and was curious if I could get some opinions. I own no properties, pay $ 550 a month in rent (long story), and live in near Denver Colorado which as you know is a pretty expensive market. I've really fallen in love with the idea of getting a duplex and house hacking it. My trouble is that a solid duplex in these areas seems to be from $4-$500,000 after looking on the MLS and talking to a couple of realtors over the span of a couple months. Does that seem like too much for a first property to you guys? I would be doing an FHA loan with little down, I make 70,000 a year from W2 job, and have about $30,000 cash. For this reason I have also been researching markets and analyzing out of state rentals at the same time. After studying David Greene's OOS book, podcasts, and thousands of posts on here I'm but still not sure if I want out of state to be my first deal. Contrarily I also figure I'm paying so little in rent right now that an OOS might not be a bad idea. Sorry if that was dragged on and sounded stupid but if anyone has some second opinions or insight it would be greatly appreciated.