How to save money when starting out?

[Eric Davenport]

Hello All!

My wife and I are new to real estate investment and hopefully will be buying our first property soon.  When researching deal analysis I have found a large debate on calculating expenses and saving money. Some say the best is to save a certain % per month for expenses (vacancies, capex, etc.), while others argue that saving 5% on $1000 income/month would be a slow fruitless savings. These people will keep large amounts of cash in savings for these expenditures and collect cashflow.

So I suppose this is a two part discussion. How do you go about saving money, especially when starting out, and if you agree with the latter, how do you factor that savings into deal analysis?

Thank you all for the opinions and perspectives!

Eric & Emily