I wish I had done something like #9. This book covers a lot of good stuff on the mechanics of doing the rent a room/house hacking, though it isn’t focused on VA loans. Regardless, I highly recommend the book and the strategy.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y15M786/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Also, my college experience was more like a job where my occupation was studying. I mostly socialized with people my age who were recent graduates rather than my fellow underclassmen and in hindsight I regret that. The irony of it all is that I got out of the Marine Corps so that I could go to school and have a “college experience” like so many of my friends from HS did, and I had fully intended to go back into the Marines post college. Instead, I got in my head about being too old for college things and my experience was more akin to graduate school. That said, I did make friends with some undergrads closer to my age and got to go to some frat parties, tailgates, etc. and also participated in some intermurals and a couple of clubs and those are some of my fondest memories of school, but my regret is that I didn’t embrace being a carefree undergrad to the extent I should have.
Books*The Richest Man in Babylon.* Copyright has expired, so you can find it hereSet for Life by Scott Trench. This is a new book so no free links allowed here. You can get the ebook from amazon.
Podcasts
Bigger Pockets MoneyBigger Pockets Real Estate
Start with the first book there. It's free, you can read it in a day, and that will get your mind aligned in the right direction. From there, switch to the podcasts since they're also free. It's tons of information to take in. You've got about 300+ hours of stuff to listen to. Listen to one or two a day, give yourself enough time to absorb the information. You'll start hearing things from each person's story that click with you. You'll start noticing patterns. Things that at first sound genius to you will sound like "no duh" later on because you'll see they're very common steps.
That is primarily focused on buying real estate for investing purposes. A lot of the people there buy houses to rent out or flip. You may not want to do that. You might just want a house for yourself. That doesn't mean it's bad advice. It's like cooking, the recipe might make 10 servings as it's written, but if you only want one serving you just scale down the ingredients. You don't have to come up with new ingredients and rewrite the entire recipe - you just use less. Buying houses is exactly the same. What works to get someone 100 properties will absolutely work to get you one.
Another free exercise you can do right now, is to get on zillow or redfin and start looking at homes. Pick one you like and run the numbers on it. Start learning the math behind how the size of the down payment affects your monthly bill (20% down isn't always the best plan), research tax rates, start learning what homes in that area usually go for based on number of bedrooms. Every other day, just pick another property and pretend you're buying it. Literally go through the steps. Use an online calculator or, if you're a nerd like me, build your own spreadsheet that will calculate everything for you. Practice every day, and sooner or later you'll be able to look at a listing and off the top of your head know how much you need down to get the monthly payment you want, and whether or not it's a good deal.
One last tip - always buy a house with the monthly payment in mind. A lot of people start off with a letter from the bank saying "you can borrow this much" and work from there, and they end up getting stuck with a monthly payment they weren't prepared for. That's backwards. Start with what you want to spend per month, then work backwards from there to figure out the down payment and the maximum loan amount. Years and years of renting, where the first question they ask is "How much per month?" and suddenly, when they go buy a house, that becomes the last thing they're worried about. I don't get it.
Strap in, here we go: