Newbie intro. Looking for deals, financing, and advice

[Glenn English]

Hey Everyone! I'm from the northshore of Massachusetts and recently upgraded to Pro. I am a bit of a newbie. I did one flip about 5 years ago (2013) and haven't done anything since. I learned a ton from that flip and have always wanted to get back to doing another. After many years of tele-sales, I became a licensed realtor last fall. I decided to quit my tele-sales job (which I hated) and work on selling my own house and get into real estate investing. I was able to sell my house for a nice profit and I have currently been renting for the last 6 months. I have 3 kids so during my time off, I've pretty much been taking care of them- school drop offs/pick ups, sports, etc. At the same time, trying to get up and running with a career as a real estate agent, however it has been very challenging. I love the bigger pockets podcasts and checking out the forums.

My situation is that I have cash from selling my own house, but I do not have income at the moment so I can't get a conventional bank loan. I don't have so much cash that I can buy and rehab a home with all that I've got. I've looked into hard money lending, but the upfront costs are very high as are the interest rates. I don't have friends and family that are going to spot me thousands of dollars either.

I know I probably have a lot of excuses already, but on top of it, the market in my area is tough. But I'd still prefer to do a deal in my area as opposed to a long distance deal - at least for my first one in awhile..

Here's what I'm thinking of doing:

1) get a regular income producing 9-5 job and be miserable for awhile. However this will allow me to fund my investments through conventional bank loans. After a couple of years I'll hopefully have enough properties where I can leave my miserable job. :)

2) Get a hard money loan and buy a property. I'm looking at either holding multi-families or fix and flips. 

3) well...what would you do?