I fancy myself to be like a low key real estate deal finder.

If you're serious about investing, I recommend going to a top 100 city in the US (population wise) and approach your city's Chamber of Commerce, Investor Groups and Clubs, and social networking clubs like the Four Seasons.If you can dress and speak the part of a well-educated person, investors will see that fire in you!

That 168k has turned into 1.5-1.6m in the past 15 years, all while putting 3 kids through fancy schools. 

No fancy pants questions or information sharing... he just knows.

It's in a non-fancy gated community around the South Bay area of LA.Now here is the plan I came up with:Year 1: We live in this new home for a year (we have to anyway - it's a primary residence loan.)

I use excel for organizing most of my work and have gotten pretty good at estimating without the fancy software by having an accurate set of architectural drawings and PDF pro (measure tool) to pull dimensions and figure material.

Nothing fancy, nothing crazy. 

@Zeke Linman there are lots of paths you can take in real estate investing, but my advise is to not over complicate it, you don't have to have fancy software or an overly complex strategy to start with, you just need to take action, I learned the vast majority of what I know about REI after I became a landlord. 

I've seen plenty of people rent and buy fancy cars and DJing equipment so it really comes down to mindset.

Also, most wholesale deals use somewhat unreasonable numbers to dress up deals.