If you want to start investing in real estate and buy your first rental property, there are six beginner steps you’ll need to take. Following these steps to a tee could mean the difference between having a home-run first investment property and a horrible experience that leaves you worse off than before. So stick around as we lead you to your first property (and financial independence) faster, even if you’re an investing beginner. We’ve brought on Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and personal finance master Kyle Mast to walk through the six steps you must take before buying a rental property. We’re not talking about the usual “find an agent, find a market, find a property” type of advice. This time, it’s all about setting you up for FINANCIAL success and, more importantly, stopping you from financial failure by making the wrong moves in the beginning. If you don’t get these steps down, you can kiss your dreams of financial freedom goodbye. We’ll touch on how to define your investing goals to get what you REALLY want out of life, how to evaluate whether or not you’re even in a financial position to invest, how to fix your bad finances if they’re not up to shape, building a solid emergency reserve for when things go wrong, and what the experts say you NEED to know before you invest in 2024. In This Episode We Cover: The six beginner steps EVERY investor must take before buying an investment property Investing with the end in mind and deciding what you really want: money or time? Budgeting, getting rid of bad debt, and how to make and save more money to invest  Building emergency reserves and why skipping on this is a costly mistake that could set you back years EXACTLY what you need to know before investing (if you can’t answer these questions, you should NOT invest) Tips to get you to your first rental property even faster  And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Join BiggerPockets for FREE Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area Expand Your Investing Knowledge With the BiggerPockets Books Be a Guest on the BiggerPockets Podcast David's BiggerPockets Profile David's Instagram Rob's BiggerPockets Profile Rob' Instagram Rob's TikTok Rob's X/Twitter Rob's YouTube BiggerPockets' Instagram A Personal Finance Masterclass with Kyle Mast Check Out SoFi’s High-Yield Savings Account Books Mentioned in the Show Pillars of Wealth by David Greene Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki The Richest Man in Babylon (BiggerPockets Edition) by George S. Clason Set for Life by Scott Trench Connect with Kyle: Kyle's BiggerPockets Profile Kyle's Twitter Kyle's Website Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-901 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email advertise@biggerpockets.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices