Is one rental worth it?

[William Hutchinson]

It seems that rentals are only worth it when you can do the domino effect to get a bunch of houses and be on the line for a bunch of debt. I have a full time job, and can get a house for 50k and get about 9000 in rent per month. From calculations and other research, it looks like I’d make about 15%. That is good, but it’s a lot more work and risk than buying an index fund that should average about 10%. (Also the rent would be taxed around 25% because of my tax bracket, and it seems like depreciation and other write offs would only cover 3 or 4K each year)

Is my math off? Or is it silly to just have 1 rental property (paid in cash). The numbers just haven’t looked good enough (or about even) for the risk and extra work.