Am I missing something? Early retirement questions

[Account Closed]

Hi everyone,

I very recently started educating myself about real estate investing, so bear with me because aside from the Beginner's Guide and the Millionaire Real Estate Investor, I'm still very green.

My question is, how does one go about in conservative real estate investing, such as buy and hold, and accumulate enough properties to realistically live off of the passive (debatable) income?

If one were to purchase one property a year for twenty years, end up with $20,000 a year in cashflow (which is very successful real estate investing IMO), you STILL are only making $20,000/year and still have many properties with large mortgages to pay off for many years, since much the the properties were likely leveraged highly. How is it possible to truly live off passive income, which for most people is higher than 20k?

Wouldn't saving like crazy (>%50) from your career and investing in index funds be more simple, risk averse, and even more lucrative way to early retirement?

Again, feel free to tear into this because I'm simply posing a hypothetical. I truly understand that real estate is not a get rich scheme, but I'm having a hard time understanding the lucrativeness of real estate over anything under 20 years.

[Kyle Hipp]

if after 20 years and aquiring 20 properties you are only cashflowing $20,000/yr, you have done something wrong. That is roughly what I cashflow now with7 properties including my personal residence with 10 units.

I will tell guys close to retirement to purchase a good duplex with a 10 year note. They might get $100/m cashflow now but in 10 years when they need the income they will have $800-$900 from one property. That is better than almost any pension out there!! Once you calculate the rate of return and do ana analysis yiu can see th comaprion better.