Newbie from PA looking for advice on potential plans

[Jason Belovich]

Hi All,

I've been crunching some numbers in hopes to come up with my plan and would love some feedback. 

About me: I'm 35 and my wife and I have been following Dave Ramsey for a few months. For whatever reason I saw him on youtube and it just clicked for me. We've become laser focused on getting out of debt and I hope to be there in 6 months or less. Once we hit baby step 4 we want to start investing in real estate and work toward financial freedom. In principle we are ok with debt if it moves us towards freedom quicker. I imagine halfway between Dave Ramsey and Rich Dad Poor Dad. I've been crunching some numbers to try and see if debt vs cash makes any sense for us given our goals. 

Goals: 1. Passive- we both work full time and want to let professionals handle the PM side of things. I want to keep focused on improving our savings rate.

2. Grow cash flow quickly and reinvest everything back into growth. Be aggressive with savings rate but safe with investments/leverage.

3. Retire or work less starting in 10-15 years.

Scenarios: I've crafted a glorious spreadsheet in hopes to put some of my ideas to the test. Please feel free to comment on the spreadsheet as I've tried to be fair and conservative while staying basic. I know I haven't factored in things like appreciation, rent increases, deprecation etc. My goal was to at a high level compare growth strategies and not necessarily get down to the penny. The general premise is that we will contribute 40k per year from our savings rate and reinvest 100% back into growth. I've added some random cells to help me figure out when savings or debt pay down would allow for additional purchases or cash flow increases.

Tab 1. Debt- This tab is based upon working with an out of state turn key provided and purchasing 150k properties with 25% down. I didn't get into the actual cash flows but assumed based on research $150 per month cash flow. I save enough to purchases 1 house with 25% down per year and at some point the cash flow allows me to add an additional house. I stop after year 10 with 14 units and start the debt snowball and each year as units get paid off the cash flow goes up. 

Tab 2. Cash- Same concept 150k turn key and making Dave Ramsey proud. Cash only. Rough estimate of net cash flow $800 per month. Save and reinvest slowly but surely. 

Tab3. Fundrise- I've had 1k in fundrise for fun over the last 20 months. So I figured why not see what it would look like. 40k plus dividends reinvested over the same period. 8.5% return. Obviously this checks a lot of boxes in that it's truly passive. At the same time its scary in that I have 0 control and I'm not sure how safe it truly is.

Tab4. Local- For fun I put together buying cheaper duplexes in the coal cracker area near where I live paying cash. This would require me finding a local PM company and realtor to work with. Again, I didn't get into super specifics but figured a net cash flow of 200 per unit. I know this route would be higher risk and higher capex/vacancy. 

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to check out my spreadsheet. Please keep in mind I was trying to be generic and I realize there is an infinite number of additional variations. I just used some general numbers I've been seeing from case studies. 

Link to google sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BNneyRprBV...

Jason