NEW to Investing and 7K to invest.

[N.A N.A]

Hello,

Im looking for honest advise positive or negative please. Im in my late 20's college grad with a 70K income. I'd like to start investing and possibly pick up my first rental property.

My situation:
As I mentioned I have a great stable job at 70K a year with a nice 401K growing. I still have some student loan debt, Auto loan, and some credit card debt. This 7K I refer to investing is my entire savings. I currently rent at about $700 a month and next year my rent will decrease to around $600.

Im looking for advise as to what direction I should go with investing. Should I try and purchase a rental property now or build up a stronger savings / emergency fund before jumping into investing?

I have lots of research to do I am completly aware but I am just looking for experienced opinions to my current situation.

Thanks!

[Patrick L.]

It sounds to me like you don't have $7k to invest, at this point I'd say you don't have anything to invest. If that is the entirety of your savings you need to work on saving more. If you used that money as a down payment on an investment property and you need to make repairs prior to renting how do you fund that? If you have a major $4k plumbing repair pop up the first month you have it rented how do you pay for that? If you have a big personal expense come up and you suddenly have no savings how do you pay for that?

It sounds like you have a reasonable income so if you work to cut back on your expenses to save as much as you can you can be on the road to investing soon. I wouldn't even recomend an owner occupied multi family right now because you just don't have the cash resererves to do it safely.

Don't get yourself into a situation that you're not going to be able to afford to get out of by investing before you're financially ready. Instead take the time to do research and even start looking to see what's out there so when you're ready you can jump right in.