All Forum Posts by: Brandon Guzman Siars

Hi Demetrius! I'm an accountant and a certified Quickbooks ProAdvisor. I use Quickbooks in my firm every day. I have also used Quicken for personal finances. Although both programs are developed by Intuit, they function very differently. In my opinion, Quicken is good for tracking personal expenses and budgeting, but for business operations you should be using Quickbooks.

Quickbooks can run many reports that Quicken simply cannot, such as balance sheets and profit and loss reports. Quickbooks is also accountant-friendly, as most accountants are using it. With Quickbooks desktop, you can create an accountants' copy to give to your accountant so he/she can prepare your taxes. If using Quickbooks online, you simply allow your accountant access to your books and you both can work in Quickbooks at the same time.

Your business doesn't have to be complicated to benefit from Quickbooks and there are many different subscription levels based on your needs. For example, if your business doesn't have payroll or inventory, you would purchase the lower tier Quickbooks that doesn't track inventory or run payroll.

This is assuming an FHA loan with 3.5% down and I will live in the property for the first year.

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*This link comes directly from our calculators, based on information input by the member who posted.

Thank you both for the input. I have ordered 3 books from Bigger Pockets, one of them being the one about how to get started with little to no money down, and it should arrive today. I'm going to keep reading and paying down my credit cards and keep my eyes open for potential entries into the business.

Hello BiggerPockets! I’m a newbie here and I’m trying to learn as much as I can about real estate investing. I’ve been doing a lot of reading but I’ve never asked any questions, so here goes...

A little background...I’m an accountant of 4 years with some experience on the tax and accounting side of real estate. I’ve also co-managed some rental properties with my husband, who technically owns the properties, for ten years. I’m not only looking to expand his business but grow my own as well.

I have registered an LLC and opened a bank account and credit card ( just to make it a real thing in my mind). I now need to make funding happen.

Here’s the ugly truth...I earn roughly $40,000 a year as an accountant. My car payment is $642 a month and I owe $80,000 in student debt, which is on an IBR of $0 per month. I also have credit cards with minimum payment around $150 per month total and a mortgage of $340.

Do I have a chance of getting started in this business because traditional loans apparently can’t approve me for what I need.