New - please recommend good beginner books!!

[Lisa Seuferer]

I think my husband and I might be too near retirement to begin investing in real estate, but we have four adult kids who have all expressed an interest in this. Three of the four are military, one is a school teacher. One of our sons is currently active duty military with a big savings account and no debt - he went straight out of high school. He, in particular, has expressed interest in buying 'something for investement' in another two years when he gets out. Two of our other kids are Army National Guard, using that to help with college expenses. None of them have debt, but only the youngest has a savings account to speak of.  All three military kids have said that they think there is some military benefit when it comes to home-loans, but we would have to investigate that further.

Husband and I have good jobs with good retirement, we are young and healthy 50-somethings. We feel as though we could be good 'helpers' if the kids chose to do anything like this, but not sure if this would be something we could do at this stage of our lives on our own. We have a nearly paid-off home and know many home maintenance tasks and who to hire in the area for the stuff we don't know how to do.

We live near and work in a busy state university/college town with a constant flux of people moving in and out of the area. Student-focused apartments are often vacant because it seems as though there are almost too many! Single-family homes for rent seem very hard to come by, from what I hear at work (I'm a nurse).

Looking forward to learning from you all.