@Julie Williams You're not ready, yet.Yet.It seems like a mountain, but you need to fix your debt and credit first.

So many episodes illustrate the creative ways people starting with no capital can utilize the value they bring to the table to get plugged into a deal.  

Now we're buying cabins in the mountains and doing the same. 

It's a mountain, to be sure, but if you cut more from your budget, get a roommate, and downwardly adjust your student loan and IRS payments, you can slog through the CC debt in a couple of years. 

(These days we have part of that earnest money go “hard” or non-refundable on day one or after hitting certain hurdles of the due diligence process.)When it’s time to close you come to the closing table with your downpayment minus the amount you already put up as earnest money.

and then split the profits after that based on the amount of work we are both bringing to the table. 

I traded weekends in the mountains for fixing up my property.

It's just in a different pile on the table...which you can get back, as long as you stay in the game.In REI, it's the same thing. 

The place where this stuff is buried is actually lower in elevation than the surrounding water table.  

We’ve had increasingly worse hail storms and wildfires that have created a real problem with insurance: rates have gone way up and in some areas like the mountains where the fires are and the towns hardest hit by the hails storms it’s difficult to find insurance at all.