Ultimately I would love to start investing in rental properties and potentially even short term rentals through Airbnb or VRBO, but right now I have no cash and poor credit, so those are unfortunately probably longer term aspirations.

As soon as we bought it, we did a few minor upgrades and replaced AC (unexpected expense).Within a year of being there she had our first kid and got pregnant again shortly after that.

@Brennan Crick  PS a year goes by really fast, when you have a short term loan.

Most HML lenders lend on short term transactions so you could use them to buy a home, fix it up but then you need to have the exit strategy in place to pay them off.

Hey BP Community,Just wanted to reach out and get some advice from Landlords who are successfully using the short term crashpad niche as a way of investing. 

Just like buying options in the stock market does not give you the stock but only the option to buy the stock for a certain time period.2.

Now that i am out of the military working in a new W2 career, i am trying to get back into the RE investing and actually understand how to invest more appropriately and correctly compared to just purchasing houses that i would like to live in...Currently i have about 80k saved up for my next investment deal and just feel like im coming up short on anything even coming close to 1% rule, so to see if there are ways to invest it, i figured i would ask the public how they would go about investing the money, because i am always up for learning something new.If possible, could you throw a quick example or maybe a short answered deal you could possibly go buy today in your own market to get an idea...I am currently searching up to 2hrs from the Tampa, FL area.

Regarding foreclosures and short sales:One thing to take into account, for a VA loan, the house has to be in livable condition.

Long story short, Wife & I were planning to visit her family in Vietnam for entire month of August (cleared my work schedule) but recently learned wife is pregnant and her doctor & CDC do not recommend pregnant females travel to Vietnam due to risk of Zika Virus.

Right now, your retirement plan most likely has minimal choices to invest in (some stock funds, bonds, ETFs if you are lucky) so you are rather limited in choosing an investment vehicle that will help you reach your goals.From first hand experience, I can tell you that getting a solo 401k was rather easy and I have checks that I write to pay for properties free and clear or to put a down payment if I want to get a loan.