New Investor from Long Island, NY

[R.J. Petrillo]

R.J. here. Long Island native (Nassau county), born and bred. Engineer by day.... and night, and pretty much every waking hour (BE & ME in MechEng), so analytics and spreadsheets are my bread and butter (as well as CAD, product development, and a slew of other things). I figured I had two options as an adult stuck here... make the best of a bad situation and try to survive, or get the hell out of dodge and move to a lower COL area. The universe seems to have kept me here in the near term, so I needed to figure out a way to afford living here.

My commute affords me the ability to catch 1 or 2 BP podcasts daily - in between Duolingo sessions, so I've been trying to learn the best I can over the past 6 months to a year. The best way to learn though is by doing - can't get level of education through a youtube video or podcast.... so I jumped in.

Just purchased a townhouse with the intention to ultimately move into, but to rent in the near term too (specific post on that later I'm sure) I know condos/townhouses are typically advised against, but the numbers made sense to me. For the amount that I would be paying in rent for a comparable place, or renting the 2nd floor or basement of someone else's house, I could start gaining equity in a place that I could ultimately rent out to someone who either commutes to NYC or even out east.

Ultimately going to look around for a multifam deal that I can FHA into as my next step, but also looking for out of state BRRRR options too - mostly in central FL. Family already has a few properties down there, and I'd like to stake my own claim. Ultimate goal is to FIRE, or at least the FI part. I'm hoping to be able to at a minimum replace my SO's salary with rental income in the next 10 years so she can enjoy being a SAHM when we start having kids.

Happy to be here. :)