It's me... the new guy.

[Benjamin Kelley]

Hello! My name is Ben aka Poke_Investor. I am from the great state of Oklahoma (Moore, OK). I am 26 years young. I have an electrical engineering degree from Oklahoma State University (go Pokes!). I work for the government as an engineer (my lady is also an engineer). About 1.5 years ago I bought my first house to live in. I have always been interested in investing in real estate and so has my lady. We are really interested in flipping and renting houses out. A short term goal would be to flip or buy our first rent house in the next two years. Our long term goal would be to own about 10 rent houses in 15 years (along with a few flips in there somewhere). We thought a flip might help get cash flow going, so we might consider flipping first. We stumbled apon this website by accident. We are currently reading "FLIP: How to Find, Fix, and Sell Houses for Profit" and "The Millionaire Real Estate Investor". We are also currently doing the "Total Money Makeover". So far, that has worked wonders. We both have our credit cards paid off and are agrresivly paying off our student loans. Our only debt currently is our student loans and the house (just keep those old cars running!!!). We plan on having our student loans paid off by the end of 2014, which is why we plan on doing a flip in the next two years (one year to pay off student loans, one year to save up money for a slip). We are trying to soak up as much information as possible. We would rather not go into "debt" to buy our first investment property, but we would consider it heavily if we knew there was definite profit by "leveraging our money" (aka going into temporary debt). We both mainly are not happy with the "daily grind". We don't like the 9 to 5. It's already getting old and we have only been in the job world for less than 3 years. We make good money at our job, but we have realized it's just not about the money. We are willing to stay at our jobs and just deal with it but would like something to do on the side. Something more fulfilling. So we are turning to the real estate market. We realize that real estate is no cake job, but we need a change in scenery. We would start out as part time for a while (15 years ish), then hopefully be able to drop the jobs and do real estate full time (if it's wildly successful). We are here to learn, communicate, and network. Thanks for your time and sorry about the punctuation, lack of pargraphing, and spelling. I was never any good in English.

-Poke_Investor