I also love the idea of financial independence through investing.  

My wife was p*ssed.3/24/16: Found BP and posted this thread: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/311/topics/29...04/01/16: Filed certificate a sale despite most of my friends, family, and coworkers telling me it was a bad idea.05/01/16: Paid my first lawyer bill (yikes!).

If I don't like it or don't make any money by Oct 2017, then I can cancel.Currently, I am looking to buy my first home to live in, not flip or rent.I am looking to learn everything and hope to put it into practice.

Thanks Chris Tan Renting out rooms sounds like a great idea during the time I live in the house.

@Madeline Burke I get the idea but there are a lot of people I would rent to that I would not loan money to!  

I have no idea if that's how you use it on other sites :)

If he still wants out is a Lease option an idea for this situation?

I was hoping I'd find support for whether or not it would be a good idea to get hard money for a 25% down payment, traditional financing for the remaining 75%, with all profits (rent less both loan payments-HML and traditional financing, prop tax, insurance, and 10% maintenance fund) going to the hard money lender under the loan is paid off. 

My idea of getting into real estate investing was coming up with 20% of your own money (that's 60k where I live for a low end property), traditional residential mortgage, net maybe $200 a month if I was lucky and repeat the process when I came up with another 20% until I had maybe 40 properties.

And @John Kent had a good idea, too, to try to conserve  as much cash as possible so you can use that as a down payment on a straight rental property.