Where to start in real estate investing?

[Paul Schear]

Hi I'm new hear and wanted to introduce myself and maybe gain some advice on how I can get started in real estate investing. I'm 28, married with a 2 year old daughter. I work full time as a county mechanic and currently mortgage my home. My wife and I have about 25k in bad debt we want to get rid of, two car payments and regular utilities bills along with the mortgage. I'm the soul bread winner in the house currently so my wife stays home with our daughter because daycare is expensive. My income alone is not enough to cover all of our bills which is why we have so much bad debt. We need food and gas. Now my wife just got her real estate license and is trying to find a place to work that will maybe let her do some work from home that way we can avoid daycare. I thought about taking out a HELOC to pay off our debts to help out but I also thought about taking the HELOC out to get some down payment money to purchase our first rental property. I'm not sure what the best way to go is here. I know I need the debt gone but I still want to get into real estate investing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Andrew Davidson]

Hi Paul, Sounds like you're in a tough spot and I am glad you are being proactive in changing your circumstances. First off, I do NOT consider myself an expert and am just getting started on my REI journey myself. I believe your best bet would be for you AND your wife to take Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace University". I'm sure a lot of people on here would advise otherwise and pick apart Ramsey's strategy on getting and staying out of debt, but I really feel led to encourage you to look into his course. He teaches some really good core principles about managing money and provides a great framework to live your life. It sounds like you're in a situation where acquiring a rental property would hurt you more than help you. I would focus on saving up an emergency fund and getting that bad debt off your balance sheet first. Dave Ramsey goes through all of this in his 7 Baby Step program. I will say, I don't agree with EVERYTHING Dave Ramsey says as personal finance is not a one size fits all, but it is a GREAT starting point for someone in your position. I took the course with my wife right before we got married and it set the tone for our marriage and got us both on the same page with our finances. We took it through our church which was offering the course for FREE (I think the course is only $50 either way). Check with your local church and see if they have anything like this!

Let me know if you have any questions or just want to chat!

Here is the link to the course:

https://www.ramseysolutions.co...