New Realtor, want to switch to investing --living southern oregon

[Cody C.]

Hello there! I just want to say that while I AM a real estate agent, that is NOT why I am here, well at least not to try to get business for that part of my income.

I am here because years ago my dad got me hooked on the rich dad / poor dad mentality, which I'm sure most of you know about. I have mixed feelings about their entire program, mainly because we(my dad and I) started out by getting their coaching at something like 5000, and due to our own life choices and lack of motivation for the program, put it on hold after six months, and then it just expired after a year and a half. TOTAL waste of money, maybe not...

fast forward to now+-a few years
I worked as an employee for a few years after I graduated from southern oregon university with a business degree, and very quickly found out that I'm not a very good employee.(read: awful...) So when my dad (who was a realtor before he passed) passed away, I got fired after returning from taking a month off without asking permission from the boss. I sat around on unemployment for a while trying to figure out what to do with my life, and somehow came to the realization that real estate might be a good place to start. It gets me my own time schedule, don't have a boss, etc... So I firmly believe that was a step in the right direction.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend of three and a half years and I went to a rich dad free seminar down at the country club, and two things happened: she started to see where investing and 'financial intelligence' could take us, and I got fired up again about real estate investing (from two angles this time).

Our current situation is as follows:
Me:
Almost zero cash and minimal credit available at this point
SOME stuff in collections from when I was in school, medical stuff
somewhere around 20,000 in school loans
10,000 in credit card debt, plus another 5000 for my Jeep.

Her:
about 5000 in savings for a rainy day
probably around 20,000 in available credit if she asked for it
JUST(October) purchased the home we live in, so a new mortgage of 150,000
That's about it.

Right now I'm hurting for the winter, as I'm pretty new in the real estate business, and she's doing okay. Wouldn't SEEM like the best scenario to start investing if you looked at my situation, but hers seems better.

The questions I have all sort of revolve around where to begin. I feel like as a realtor, I have a certain edge over other R.E. investors in our area who arent, but maybe that's just my hubris speaking. We are going down this weekend to a $199 three day seminar put on by the rich dad education company to learn a bit about real estate investing, but I expect it mostly to be them trying to sell their coaching or higher priced classes.

Where should we start?

How should we position ourselves to start earning some passive income?

Should we focus on flips or rentals at first?

Where does the money come from at first?

I'm taking the time to go through the articles on this site, and through the forums, plus I have a handful of other books that I'm reading as well. I just figured if I was going to introduce myself, might as well do it fully.

Hope this wasn't too long...

Thank you,
Cody Croslow