Rent first vs Buying investment property

[Matthew Medcalf]

Hello,

I am a new college grad from MIlwaukee Wisconsin looking to get into real estate.

I currently live at home and am starting to research into next steps.

I’m trying to decide if it would be best to live on my own for a bit or use the opportunity of living at home to save for a down payment.

My financial situation looks like:

Salary: 70 K

Debt: Student loan 31K 4.5 % interest

Emergency fund: 16 K

401K: 10K

Any advice would be appreciated!

[Jack Medford]

I stayed at home until I was able to save up and buy my own place. If you have the opportunity to stay for cheap (or free), you can use it knock out a lot of your student loan debt plus save up for an investment property. 

If your goal is to do investing anyway, might as well take advantage of low cost of living as long as you can. Then when you're ready to buy you can look for a house hack (if that strategy interests you) which will further help you keep living expenses low. 

Unless living at home is completely unbearable, I think it is the smart way to go. It may feel like you're falling behind your peers who are all finding their own places, but in a couple years you will be so much farther ahead.