All Forum Posts by: Brock Boudreaux

I live in a much lower cost of living area than where you do, and everyone has a different situation, so it's hard to tell which budget item is too high. Nothing looks out of the ordinary to be honest. The only thing I could thing of is your mortgage payment is 36% of your budget, which to me seems a little high. I'd like to keep mine at or below 30%, but 36% isn't THAT much more, and you live in Phoenix, I'm not sure if that's even possible for you.

I don't have any specific information to help you, because I am a beginner myself, but I would check out "Dion Talk Financial Freedom" on YouTube. He retired from his job using small multifamily investing (house hacking too) in Washington. He's not a super big YouTuber (around 11k subs currently), but he's very genuine, gives fantastic tips and information, and focuses on delivering the information rather than making videos on click bait things that "sell views". He even gives you his email to ask him questions at any time. Real nice guy.

I'm set to graduate college in Civil Engineering in about a year and half from now. Currently I'm working as an intern for my state's Department of Transportation, and I plan on getting hired on full time upon graduation, which will be almost a guarantee. I also have been self educating myself on REI for long enough now that I'd feel relatively confident about looking for a property right now if I had the means (still in school, and don't have the income yet). For anyone who is familiar, I've followed Michael Zuber's (One Rental at a Time) advice about putting in the work and knowing your market, so I've kept up with my "buy box" spreadsheet tracking all the properties that go on in my market that I would potentially be interested in. I've decided that I'd like to house hack to get my foot in the door of REI, but I'm curious if there any obstacles that I might have to face to get the lending on a small multifamily (duplex, triplex, etc.). I'll have enough in savings to put 20% down, but I do have access to a VA Loan that I would use for this house hack to get that low or no money down and be able to take the 20% that I would have put down and use as reserves (I'm sure the lender would like to see that), my credit score is around 780 so that wouldn't be the problem, but where I see the issue coming from is work history or X amount of years of income. I'm very lucky to have parents who don't mind me staying with them while I finish college, and wouldn't mind me staying for a little while afterwards too until I get everything settled, but I'd like to go out on my own again as soon as I can (did 4 years military after HS, moved back in with them to finish college after)

I know there really is no way to know my options for sure until it gets closer and I'm actively lender shopping, but just curious if anyone on here has any experience or knowledge on this situation.

Also any extra advice would be greatly appreciated, always looking to gain some knowledge.

Thanks in advance.

I try to keep things as simple as possible, while also attempting to be somewhat organized. All of my income (job and side hustle included) goes into one checking account. Then I set up auto transfers once every 2 weeks on Friday into my other account (same bank for insta transfer) for what I basically want to pay myself. That's my personal daily use checking account. Everything left over in that other account either is auto transferred once per week (predetermined amount for automation) into my Emergency Savings (same bank again for reason mentioned), auto transferred to my Ally online savings (only for their bucket system which i use for sinking funds), and the remaining amount that doesn't get transferred is my next real estate investment plus the CapEx/Vacancy.

Example (fake numbers): I get $8000 income over the course of a month, all of which deposits into check acc 1. I know that I spend $3600 on expenses every month so I have auto transfers set up every other Friday to send $1800 to checking acc 2, which is where all of my daily transactions come from. I also auto transfer every Friday $30 to my Emergency Savings acc, and $150 to online savings (sinking funds). I’m not gonna do the math but let’s say at the end of the month, I have $2500 left over that didn’t get transferred from checking account 1. That amount will be saved every month (assuming my income doesn’t fluctuate too much, which unless you are in sales, a real estate agent, etc, shouldn’t matter too much)

Sorry I know this is kinda long and kinda went a little more into personal finances, but that’s what I do. Everything is automated for the most part and I can always adjust how much I want to pay myself

Edit - I didn’t mention it, but I just track income vs expenses on google sheets that I also use for taxes. I don’t have a lot of transactions going on so it takes me maybe an hour per month to update