Next Step

[Dustin T]

My wife and I bought our first house when we were 20 (I'm 24 now). We could barely afford it and bought with a zero down loan. We got very luck as we bought just before the boom and sold our 126k house for 210k. we upgraded to a 310k which is nearly triple the sq footage and has a real garage... oh man is that nice. our old place was a mere 600sq ft. tight for 2 adults with 2 dogs... LOL!

I think I spent the money in the right way, although sometimes I worry about one aspect. I took some of the equity to pay off our only car payment ( :protest: ) I had diligently made huge payments on my silverado and paid it off earlier in the year. Our 3rd vehicle I paid cash for, and this, my wife's DD... I paid off with the equity from our first house. Freeing up that monthly payment 5 years early allowed us to buy MUCH more house, and I still had enough equity left over from the sale of our first home to make a 20%+ down payment on this new home.

so essentially, I have 20%+ equity in our home and no other debt (except about $1k in school loans, but I'll probably pay that off this month).

I look at what we did with that first house and I can't imagine how we could have done any better.

so the point of this post...? I think it's time to rinse and repeat. But I'm not sure where to go. I want to leverage the banks money to turn a profit again. But should I definitely stay with real estate? Foreclosures? Fixer uppers? I've become more and more handy when it comes to tools and my father in law is GREAT with this stuff.

with my age and experience, what would you pros recommend?