Originally posted by @Account Closed:
I see a TON of investors and people just starting out. MOST if not all successful investors started with capital. I did not. When I started in this I had 120$. My rent was past due, my electric was past due and I didnt even have a vehicle. I was broke, in debt and had 3 kids to take care of...
Whew! Thank you! I was already starting to get a little discouraged with everyone saying he wasn't ready to start.
"Get a better paying job." My husband and I are on permanent social security disability. We're already doing all we can from home; hubby makes and sells crafts, I do computer services. But it's a far cry from a second job.
"Save up some equity first." We each took a MAJOR cut in pay when we ended up on the disabled list, and used all our savings to keep our primary house. The Countrywide/Bank of America sh*t took care of our credit, so we're starting from scratch.
In fact, thanks to CW/BOA we can't even get a home equity line of credit or refi our house to get some of the equity out of it! But I'd rather not touch my personal home anyway; I'd rather use REI to pay off our mortgage. At my age, I don't think it's a good idea to risk my own personal property.
Fortunately, we have no credit cards, since we maxed those out during the housing crunch and ended up not being able to pay them.
And we only have one 17-yr old (step) daughter who lives with her mom, so there's no child support due to anyone.
I've tried network marketing, affiliate marketing, blogging, etc., etc., as a "second job," and those are not viable. If I'm going to work that hard and put in that many hours, I'm going to focus on real estate, not on making someone at the top of a "pyramid scheme" more wealthy.
We know it would be a lot easier if we had capital to start with. However, what caught my attention to BiggerPockets in the first place were the podcasts about finding private lenders and using someone else's money based on the value of the house, not on how much money I had personally and what my credit score looked like.
My brother and I studied the "no money down" Dave Del Dotto method, to no avail; I worked with an investor who flipped houses. He even let me live rent-free in a fixer-upper while I fixed it up! He was trying to do things the "Carlton Sheets" way, but his private lender ended up doing some shady deals and landed himself in jail. So I lost my mentor.
Then hubby and I went to a couple of ************* seminars; we drove around three surrounding counties, spent time at the courthouse and doing online research of deeds, etc.
We have a basic knowledge of the concept of investing; I've been reading up on it since I was 18 and thinking about buying a duplex for a first apartment. That was almost 40 years ago.
My husband is 49; I'm almost 57. In two years, "our" youngest will be out of high school and we have six grandchildren. It's time to get the ball rolling.
We're going to a local REI meetup next week; the BiggerPockets CD is on its way, and I LOVE driving around looking at houses; I LOVE doing the research on the computer, and I LOVE actually walking through houses. Now it's a (long past) time to start doing something about it, right?
Have a great day everyone!
