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.