Where to go from here?
Hi, so I am 22 years old, live around the Seattle area, and am looking to get into real estate investing. I have spent a decent amount of time on Bigger Pockets and other investment mediums to gain some knowledge but I just need somes tips on how to get my foot in the door and potentially start my first flip. The market around the entire Puget Sound area is fairly expensive, not like what you see around other investors buying houses for just $100,000 (I wish, maybe for a mobile home/trailer). From what I see, I would say the average cost in neighboring cities would be around 300k-400k (for desirable areas). I work construction and have a decent amount of experience and connections through work that getting my foot in the door flipping houses would make sense. Now, I don't work some glorified office job that pays an amazing amount of money like I see in other posts, of course it's easy to save an obsurd amount of money to invest in real estate if you make good money. With that said, I do make decent wages and it will continue to go up until I become a Journeyman. My budget and wages are as follows:
Income:
$27.2 (hourly wage) * 40 (hours a week) = $1,088 (pre-tax income)
$1,088 - $405.6(deductions: Social Security, Medicare, Federal Withholding, Union Dues) = $682.4 (take home/week) (slightly changes based on worker's comp rates)
$682.4 * 4.33 weeks/month = $2,954.79 monthly income
Expenses:
Food: ~$400 (13.54%)($100/week. Not sure how this sounds for most people. Just groceries, not dining)
Utilities: $141.12 (4.78%) in this category I have phone bill, gym, Netflix, and phone insurance.
Rent: $500 (16.92%) I split rent with my girlfriend and this includes my portion of gas, sewer, pud.
Transportation: ~$340 (11.51%) This is car insurance and gas. I travel a lot for work since I live out of the city where its cheap to live.
Clothing/Personal care: $443.22 (15%) this would mainly consist of random things like laundry soap or deodorant, etc. I don't really spend money on clothes, I'm pretty minimalist, just the occasional dinner date with the girlfriend.
so Total so far I have: $1,824.34/$2,954.79 (~61.74%)
Now I would like to put about 15 more percent into a Roth IRA before using my saved money towards potentially more volatile investments, so that would put me at about $700 a month to save for real estate investing. But with these numbers even living a minimalist lifestyle, saving enough money for a 20% down payment on a fixer upper at $300,000 is quite the stretch. At 700 dollars a month for a 60k down payment would take me a little over 7 years to save. Now like I said I would get wage increases as I progress towards becoming a Journeyman (current wage is $38.10/hour), but i would also like to live in a house (potentially using a VA loan to avoid 20% down and PMI). On top of all this I am looking to make flipping houses my entry into investing then hopefully turn to more BRRRR type business plan so I can get out of working construction, although I would be putting in a lot of my own sweat equity into my flips. I am just curious if I could be able to get a private investor to fund a flip for me and me do the Project Managing and some labor and split profits (no I don't mean 50-50), or if it would be an option to find a flipper and be able to be an assistant to them, and gain experience and network like that. The only thing with the second option is, is that I do work a full-time job so I am not sure how that would look.
I know this is a long post, and thank you if you made it through it all, I would just appreciate any insight from other people in similair situations or experienced investors as to what I could do to make this happen in a reasonable time frame.
Thank you,
Josh