The Accidental Real Estate Investors from MD

[Nigel Perkins]

Hello All! My wife and I made the wonderful decision to rent out her 3 bedroom townhouse. Originally in attempting to relocate my wife to the Fort Bragg, NC area where I am currently stationed. We ultimately decided that because she only owned the home for a short period of time and would have taken a huge loss to sell.

I was ultimately able to persuade her to rent the property and pay down the mortgage and also make a passive income. After conducting heavy research into real estate investing and after being more that satisfied with receiving passive income every month we realized that this could not only be a source of income to help us cover the cost of our newborn daughter's impending private school and college tuition, and later down the road a path to financial freedom and possible early retirement.

Right now with our first property we are currently faced with an important decision if we pay off all of our current student loan and consumer debt it would free up an additional $2,000 that we can save for future investments. Would it be wiser to pay down our debts or use our additional monthly rental income to invest in our second property?