Seeking advice on self financed LLC's

[Marty Summers]

Need some advice here: - Primary residence was paid off (265k of equity) - Purchased a 260k duplex for 227k and put 80k of our own cash into it and the rest from an interest only HELOC on primary residence. - Duplex cashflows 2100 gross after payment - Duplex is under an LLC and we extended our Umbrella policy another 1 mil and to cover duplex. Scenario: - We purchased another primary residence worth 295k and financed 230k. (30yr mort.) - We have listed our Old primary residence for 265k FSBO. - If we get say 250k from the sale, we have 140k to pay off the HELOC. - So 110,000 left over in pocket. - Then we'll have a business LLC duplex fully paid for with 230k on our Primary residence. Payments will be 1165 per month. The questions I have are: 1.) Should we pay our Primary residence down to 130k keep 10k in bank and refinance our primary residence? 2.) Should we take 80k and look for a 150k investment property and expand? 3.) I mean should I feel ok having most of my Investment LLC properties paid for while carrying that majority of our financed business on our primary mortgage? 4.) Or should we just pay off our primary residence and put all of the financed business portions onto the LLC's? A lot of gurus say that money tied into your mortgage bricks is dead money to which I agree. However, why do I worry about self financing a paid off business with my primary mortgage...if I got sued or something happened to our LLC basically I could lose a paid off business and still be holding the bag on our primary residence. So what do you guys recommend? We want to expand the cashflow but trying to be very smart as a newbie. please advise! Thanks! -Marty