Newbie with FHA question

[Andrew Alpsteg]

Hey everyone! 

I am new to BP. I have been listening to the podcasts for months and lurking on the forums (briefly). I have checked out BP YouTube videos and also recently started reading Brandon's book on rental property investing. 

I am finally starting to feel pretty comfortable with the knowledge I have gained. My plan is to begin by investing in a tri-plex and living in it, aka house hacking. I hope to secure an FHA loan to finance this and rent out the other two units. From there I want to continue to acquire a new single family or multi-unit homes each year from my first purchase. I live in Lincoln, Nebraska and plan to begin investing locally.

So I have some agents showing me tri-plexes in the area tomorrow. When I was in college I was pretty irresponsible with my credit card. As a result of being a dummy, my credit score is at about 655. I have no debt and probably enough savings to use a 20% down conventional mortgage. Although this would eat up nearly all my savings. 

I have heard some conflicting info on using an FHA loan for a multi-unit investment property. Would there be any reason I would get denied an FHA loan given my circumstances? Should I wait to invest and work on my credit? Any advice or information would be much appreciated!

Thanks everyone! Very excited to be apart of this community!