Am I Starting Too Soon?

[Jordan J. Osborne]

Hey everyone!

I’m curious to hear from you guys about whether I should wait to invest in real estate until I get better financials or if it’s not a bad idea to start now.

Background:

I’m a 25 old college student, graduating in 7 months, with political science and economics degrees. I’m using the GI bill so I’m not accruing student debt. I own one Condo that I’m hoping to start renting out within a year. I didn’t start getting my finances in order until a month ago.

My wife makes a decent salary and is the current bread winner in our household.

Dilemma:

I have a large amount of credit card debt, luckily with relatively low APR's (13.499% & 7.99%), but it would probably take me a year or two to payoff when I get a decent job. I also have relatively small savings right now.

Is it irresponsible for me to search for a duplex using my VA home loan (so I can put 0% down) and start house hacking with OPM? Or is it not the worst idea to start early?

Thank you very much for any and all input here!

[Corey Hawkinson]

@Jordan J. Osborne If you can house hack with 0% down I would highly recommend doing that. You have to live somewhere anyways so there’s no real opportunity cost that you’re missing. The more units/cash flow that you can achieve at 0% down the better.

However, after that I would recommend focusing on paying off the credit card debt. You say those are low rates, and I guess they are compared to other credit card rates, but that’s a lot of interest that doesn’t help you at all. You’re basically throwing that money away every month.