How long?

[Anna NA]

This question is for the more experienced REI's. I'm starting out in REI and hope to close on my first investment property in the next few weeks. I've tried to calculate out how long until I can have a decent monthly "salary" from my investments, but it's kind of hard to do that considering that I'm not sure how things will actually pan out as far as having to fix up places, deal with tenants, tax breaks, etc.

I realize this may be a quite rhetorical question, but after how many years (and houses) would you say you got to a reasonably comfortable level of satisfaction where you could afford a decent lifestyle with some money left over to invest in a few more properties. For comparison's sake I'm looking into buying properties in the 50k range and renting out which I'm hoping would bring in about $600/mo each... I've attempted to calculate this, but every time I try the numbers to me don't look that favorable so am I omitting some major up sides to investing such as tax breaks or does it take many many years to own say a ferrari if you're doing this single no kids..?