Cash flow question from newbie

[Jyothi Pandit]

Hi there,

We are somewhat new to real estate investing. We've bought and hope to buy a couple more next year. A couple of questions regarding cash flow. So after paying for Mortgage, Insurance, Property Taxes, HOA and property management, we expect to have maybe $100-200 per month. What would you do with this extra cash? My husband and I are not in 100% agreement about this. One of us says we should just keep it in a savings account - to be used for any maintenance/repairs/vacancy issues that come up. The other one wants to invest it in stock market so it can grow. If we invest and we do need additional cash to cover maintenance/repairs/vacancy, we'd either sell some of the investment (if it has gains) or dip into our personal fund to cover the cost. The houses would be held in our own names so it's not like we are co-mingling business and personal assets anyways.