All Forum Posts by: Roberto Santana

@Peter Mckernan Honestly, if I pick up a second job I would never see my family. 12-16 hour days in the military take a toll on you. I will look into selling the random items we picked up along the way on eBay. That'll definitely get rid of a good amount of items.  

@Anthony Greco So I've looked into house hacking a duplex but my family is ready to have our own house. My wife has followed me thorough 3 continents over the past 7 years so we are ready to settle in a place without neighbors right next to us. The plan is to kinda BRRR the place we buy, live in it for the few years and renovate then when we move, rent it out. While we do that have another place to move in renters as soon as possible. Either one of my options above will include a single family under a VA loan.

If you ever visit Naperville next year shoot me a message, hopefully we are a little further along on our goals by then.

Good day BP,

So I searched the forum and found a lot of good subjects with advice but it wasn't really geared to my situation. If I missed it I would really appreciate someone pointing me in the right direction.

Future: In January I am moving to Northern Illinois as a military transfer and will be buying my first house that will become a rental once I transfer again. First house will be financed using a VA loan and the rental will be 10-20% down mortgage.

So here it is, Over the past 10 years of being young and not educated about money I have stumbled into a good amount of debt. Last year I caught myself at around 60k and all of this is from traveling, buying things I had no business buying, a car that I sold off (after realizing my mistake), and a list of other mistakes that are haunting my dreams. As of today I'm sitting at about 27k after selling off as much as I could, setting a strict budget, and attacking it while still setting aside some savings (currently 5k at $200/m) and putting into my TSP (currently at 40k at $500/m).

So now that you have the back story here is my dilemma:

After doing the math I opened myself to be in 1 of 2 situations:

1. I pay off debt by:

Dumping savings and stopping TSP contributions and use those funds to pay off the debt which will have my paying it off in roughly 16 months. BUT I will then have to wait an additional 6-8 months to have enough saved up for a down payment.

2. I save up the funds and jump right in: 

I do the same but save up the money and have my first rental by early/mid next year. This is what I'm doing right now.

Am I on the right track? What would you do different?  

@Arthur Banks: Thanks for the invite!! Might be awhile before I can attend, I'll be moving out that way at the end of the year.

Hey Everyone, Just got here a few days ago and now I feel like I’m ready to start investing in Real Estate!! Not because I know everything (LMAO who really does?) but I finally found a place that I can find the answers I’m looking for or at least ask the stupid questions no one wants to ask.

I'm currently in the U.S. Navy and have been in for roughly 12 years. I grew up in Jacksonville Fl. but thanks to the Navy I've been all over the world. I'm married with two boys (6 and 3) and just celebrated our 7 year anniversary.

I got the idea invest from a friend of mine that is renting his home out while stationed overseas. It got me thinking on how can I do this on a bigger scale? So I got some book recommendations from friends and started with Rich Dad, Poor Dad then it all spiraled from there. Long story short, a few weeks later and after getting through 3 books I was watching some YouTube videos that weren’t what I needed, then I ran into the Bigger Pockets YouTube videos and wandered over to this page and VIOLA now I’m hooked, the wife is hooked and we are on our way to get our first place here in the next 6-9 months. We’ll be heading over to the Gurnee, Grey’s Lake area North of Chicago in January when I transfer.

Ok, well now you know a little about me hope to hear from you all when my stupid questions start rolling through lol. And I promise to pay it forward and educate and send anyone interested over to this page to learn as much as possible to get into this amazing community.