New in North Florida

[Jenifer McGroarty]

My name is Jenifer and I live in North Florida, between Jacksonville and Lake City.

I spent several of my 19 year marriage, helping my in laws do work on their rental properties. I loved it. We decided it's what we wanted to do when my husband retired. My husband has been in the military for 14.5 years and since we have 5 kids (and I was done living in housing) we decided that we'd buy a money pit. Lol I joke about it, but the amount we've put into the property is almost what my realtor gave me a my estimated CMA. Our mortgage is well below our BAH and it seemed like a "good investment" until I woke up and realized it wasn't a monetary investment. I'm not terribly upset though, we live it a great area and have a small farm on the property that is wonderful therapy for us all.

We want to get started in our real estate adventure. His retirement will not support our lifestyle. We don't want to spend another 20 years in the rat race and we've still got kids at home. In December I started researching retirement options, investing and I have always come back to real estate. We thought we didn't have the money to purchase until he retired, but we're reading/listening and realizing we have options. All of my kids are finally going to be in school or moved on to greener pastures this fall and with his job, it's difficult for me to find a decent paying job (that I don't want anyways) that is flexible. I have time to do this now, so why not? 

The goal is to make real estate investing replace and exceed his current income. Our only real experience in real estate, is how to work on the houses. My husband is an electrician and I have a background in art and design. My husband won't have time to work on any houses with me until he retires, so I'm not sure what my best option would be for investing until then.