At what point in real estate do you really become financially free?

[Owen Reeter]

I am 20 years old and trying to learn as much as i can about real estate so that when i graduate college and have a steady income Ill be able to make smart investments hopefully leading to financial freedom. Now I am brand new to real estate so this could be dumb but I'm reading Brandon Turners "Rental Property Investing" book and I was intrigued by chapter 3 where he list out 4 plans to start with when getting into real estate. I was specifically interested in his 2nd plan which was "Building wealth through single-family homes" where he basically says you save enough to buy your first property along with enough for other fees and then you just keep saving the money you make from that property along with some money you save from your job and once you have enough money you buy your next property and then you basically just keep repeating that until you have your desired amount of properties. That all makes sense to me but it makes me wonder how can you be "financially free" or even just start building wealth if you are 100's of thousands of dollars in debt at all times. Like I see how it could work in a perfect world but i cant wrap my head around the idea that I could be making a profit if I still don't actually own the house and still have to pay down all of the loans. I mean isn't all my saved money just going into another property that will just put me in even more debt. I understand that the tenants will paying me money that i will put towards paying off the house but it just seems like so much could go wrong. Hopefully that makes sense, please let me know if I'm just being dumb or if that's a valid question!