Live under your means and start thinking about investing in Real Estate.In your position the thought of finding a duplex to house hack, live in one side and rent the other. 

You have an excellent jump start- the VA loan is such an amazing tool to get the ball rolling.

My current goal is to analyze properties for potential deals on BP pro daily and start wrapping my head a general understanding of the process. 

That takes a lot of effort.I'd encourage you to start thinking bigger.

That's annoying they changed it with no warning - Brandon would always talk about all the FREE tools they have on here for newbies to start practicing analyzing properties.

Focus on absentee owners and start with the ones who live the farthest away and only own one property in the area since they have the least use for the property.You can also drive for dollars, looking for anomalies of disrepair and then look them up in the tax records and use a site like Spokeo to do cheap skip tracing.

The previous owner started to repair it.Looks a little rough, but we’ll get her all fixed up.

Since you're open to markets beyond NYC, you might want to connect with local investor meetups or REI groups in those areas to build relationships with agents, wholesalers, and lenders who understand the nuances of each market.If you're looking to break out of analysis paralysis, maybe start by narrowing down one or two target markets and running numbers on actual deals.

Build out the network for GCs in your area and start to bid jobs, then you can build out how much each job would cost.

This kind of govt nosiness and overreach is why I initially decided against the financial planning industry before starting in credit. you can thank 2008 and all the fraud that went on for that.