What would you do?

[Shiv Jey]

I wanted to ask everyone what you all think my best strategy should be.  

Current status:

Wife and I are employed and rather high-income earners (total household income >1M), but because we are employed, we are getting destroyed on taxes.  We are doing traditional investments, including 401k, 457, great pension plans if we stay long enough, etc.  We are investing with the help of a financial manager/consultant to ensure we can maintain a nice lifestyle upon retirement (which is realistically 25-30 years away).

I got excited about real estate investing after reading a couple books and seeing the potential.  Positive cashflow from rental income will not affect our lifestyles and this isn't meant to take place of our jobs.  We live fairly meagerly and splurge more on convenience rather than big ticket items (no fancy car, big house, etc.  just exorbitant seattle delivery fees :) ).

Both our jobs are time consuming.  Wife is on board and fully supportive, but I cannot count on her to "get it done" when issues arise.  I work erratic hours 6-7 days a week.  I would most certainly require a property manager even with my very first property.

My thoughts:

If through rental properties I can break even in terms of rental income versus expenses, and given that I would be in a financial position to pay down mortgages fairly aggressively and benefit from rental income long-term, it seems to me collecting real estate properties would be a great way to build a vast portfolio, perhaps more effectively than traditional investments.  Meanwhile, I would not be significantly affected by waves of market rises and crashes since my job is fairly safe and well-paying and should be able to handle such slow-downs.  After putting money into traditional investments, I imagine I could save an additional 100k annually to invest into real estate.

My current actions:

I'm lurking on this site to try to meet as many Seattle-area investors as I can, reading aggressively about rental property investing, and saving money.  Wife and I are newlyweds and I have lots of student loans so we're in the saving money phase in the meantime.

So, if you were in my position, how would you play the real estate game?  I thought that since additional monthly income is not required, I can look at properties that even net zero positive cash flow, as long as all expenses and costs are covered, have tenants essentially pay down the mortgages while I reap the rewards, and hopefully, appreciation as well.  At age 60 I can sell out or bequeath the properties and retire.  What would you do?