This camp will often find the college graduate working in their same workplace and use them to prove their point - "I make the same 10 bucks an hour waiting on customers and I didn't have to waste my money on college."

Then her hours got cut at her workplace about 6 months ago. 

Assuming you meet the vesting requirements, you get an instant 67% return by contributing 6% to your workplace retirement plan. 

She also told me I should send my packages to my friend's place or at my workplace.

I would love to "House Hack" for this first property, but I am afraid that it might be too far from my workplaces in Orange County.

No this is not a true real restating investing book, but it discusses harnessing creativity in the workplace.

Sometimes lenders consider the armed services similarly to a college grad entering the workplace, since you are committed to a field for XX amount of years, so they may count the income without the aging on it.Your $1,200 coupled with the income from the property (other tenants) who are already in place, will count toward qualifying income, so for a $60K purchase, you should be okay unless you have alot of debt that offsets the income (that shows up on your credit report). 

Seems to be the consensus around my workplace...

Since you’ll be living in one of the units potentially, you should qualify for “owner occupied” interest rates...don’t quote me on that as I am not a lan officer, but worse case, you’ll get “investment” rates, which are still pretty darn low these days.

I got bit by them a few years ago pretty badly after a workplace accident took the life of a construction worker.