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Updated over 4 years ago,
Great to Finally be Engaging
Hello BiggerPockets Community,
My name is Israel Haugen and I’m a 24-year old aspiring real estate investor currently living in the beautiful city of Stevens Point, Wisconsin. I graduated from the university here in May of 2019 with hopes of going to medical school after taking a gap year. Sure enough, I stumbled upon Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Kiyoski’s book truly made me re-evaluate my life and where I was headed. I quickly realized I didn’t want to subscribe to the rat race lifestyle and instead wished to take control of my finances, my habits, and my life. Roughly around the same time, a buddy told me to attend a webinar by Brandon Turner in late fall of 2019 and I was instantly hooked on the idea of making my money work for me through passive income and real estate! For the first time in my life, I felt as though I was walking down a life path that I was actively choosing for myself, rather than allowing the wants and hopes of others to dictate my steps.
Thanks to Joshua Dorkin and Brandon Turner's investing in real estate beginner's guide, I know I definitely want to start out house hacking a multifamily property, hopefully a quadplex, for my first investment during Q3 or Q4 of 2021. As of now, I plan on holding a full-time job while investing, so I'd like to purchase one or two more multifamily properties per year while hiring a reliable property manager to take care of the day-to-day functions. The hope is by the time I turn 30 I will own 6 to 10 multifamily properties and to be completely honest, my goal kind of ends there for now. Other types of real estate investing really interest me, such as BRRRR investing and commercial investing, and having the foundation of multifamily properties could almost certainly help me move into a different area!
Unfortunately, I developed some pretty poor financial and spending habits during college as I currently sit around $9,500 of consumer debt, with a car loan/credit card debt. My first major priority/goal is paying down this debt to be 100% debt-free by my next birthday, May 16th. During this next 11 months, I’m looking forward to listening to more of the BiggerPockets podcast, actively analyzing deals for much-needed practice, and reading even more pertinent books.
I’d love to close this introduction up with some questions for all of you! Do you have any suggestions for books to read, things to learn, etc. over the next 11 months? Do you have recommendations on great cities/areas to look into for investing as I’m trying to leave the Stevens Point area to begin my investing career! Lastly, what strategies did you use to get yourself over the hump of purchasing that first property? I’m so excited to start investing, yet there are equal parts dread/fear as it feels like I still know close to nothing and the prospect of buying a home can seem so overwhelming.
I know this was a very long introduction post and I’m truly grateful to anyone who took the time to read it through, let alone leave a comment or answer a question. It took me 6 months to finally get out of my shell and I’m looking forward to becoming a useful and active member of such a powerful community.