UPDATE:
So I've made a lot of progress since this thread started, and I am starting to think more about passive income ideas. Ultimately real estate is something i'm interested in pursuing (as I've noticed a lot of people here are). First! An update on my standing:
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Monthly Income:
Pre-Tax - $7,243.74 $7,303.74 (not sure how this went up)
Post-Tax/withdrawals - $4,628.6 $4,688.72
Paycheck Withdrawals (per month):
Parking -$47.40 0
Retirement - $434.62 (+$495.48 employer)
Federal Tax - $1169.68
Medicare - $104.34 105.9
Social Security - $446.18 452.82
State Tax - $444.00 452.00
Total - $2,619.36 2,674.95 (Odd that this number went up...)
Monthly Bills:
Rent - $650
Car Payment - $281
Car Insurance - $90
Phone - $157 19.00
Electric - $107 104 (The truth here is 107 was budget billing. 104 is the real bill, and has dropped significantly)
Water - $8
Internet - $25
Banfield Veterinary - $25
Total - $1,343 1,202
Monthly Expenses:
Groceries - $350
Dining - $350 80
Fuel - $135 15 (I put in a half tank every month now Bicycles!)
Misc. Purchases - ~$200 (Will reduce - is the "hobby money" for outfitting the bicycle, getting cooking equipment, etc...)
Total - $1,035 645
Investment Funds:
Tiaa-Cref Retirement Fund (Current Company) - $1,439 4806.35
Fidelity Investment (Old Company's 401K) - $1,641
Vanguard Personal ROTH IRA -$6,533.16
Vanguard Rollover Traditional IRA -$1,183.88
Current savings - $5,249.59 5,511.09
Monthly contribution to savings account - $2,000-2250 (Currently varies as I've had some surprise onetime expenses)
Car Loans - $9,186.36 @ 4.5%
Car's "worth" - $12,500
Credit Card - $0.00
Total NetWorth (according to Mint) - $21,591.12
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So! Progress! Awesome! I plan to pay off the Car loan by December of this year (hopefully November) and then we will sell the S.O.'s car and become a 1 car household. After that, being completely debt free, I'll open a brokerage account with Vanguard to start socking away 2,250-2650 a month. We are also working on being able to live on solely on my income and the S.O. socks away as close to 100% of her income as possible as well.
Now, what I'm interested in doing is starting in real estate. The SO and I have a little dream to run a bed and breakfast in the mountains and possibly have a vineyard as a hobby when we retire, and I think Real Estate/Land Lording would fit nicely with that dream of ours.
So the question is, with my current standing and my stated 6 month goals for debt elimination, what would the next steps be? Purchase my own house first before getting into land lording? Keep socking away money into brokerage/IRA and forget about homes/real estate for a while? A combination? Something else entirely?
I have a lot of learnin' to be done about real estate (and, arebelspy, I have been grabbing a lot of book titles from your posts), but just making sure my next steps are solid. Any other advice on where I should go from here would be much appreciated as well!