Newbie from Bethlehem, PA seeking to invest in Phoenix, AZ

[Kyle Bambu]

Hi everyone! My name is Kyle Bambu. I will be graduating from Penn State University in a couple of months with a degree in Aerospace Engineering. After graduation, I'll be moving to Phoenix, AZ and working for Honeywell. I've been fortunate enough to not take on any student loan debt, and my many summers as a caddie at a prestigious golf club has allowed me save a little over 40k that I currently have in stocks. 

I have always been fascinated with starting some sort of business and have several failures already under my belt. I hadn't really considered real estate investing until recently because I always figured the best way to accumulate wealth would be through starting my own business-- now I realize that RE is probably the better route. 

My current plan is to hopefully start house hacking immediately once I move to Phoenix. I plan to fly down at least once or twice before graduating to check out houses, talk with agents, and pull probate/divorce records to look for off market deals. My parents and everyone else around me keeps telling me I "need to just rent and figure things out for the first few years." Am I wrong to want to start investing immediately? I am mostly interested in some kind of house hack or BRRRR strategy. Best case scenario, I hope to find an off market deal that needs some work with an ADU or casita. Live in it for a couple months while I fix it up, and then start renting it out on AirBNB or another STR site. Then, I'll refinance to pull out my equity and repeat. Thoughts on my plan? Any advice in general is greatly appreciated. Looking forward to talking to everyone!