Tax Shelter for Real Estate Income

[Justin Y.]

I'm just getting starting in real estate investing, have one property that nets roughly $2k every month.  The tax shelter is one of the things I like about real estate (since I have a day job as well).  And before going further, I'm in discussions with a tax professional but looking for anything myself or they haven't thought of from the BP community.

I guess my question is for folks that have been investing in real estate for years and built out several properties, knowing what you know now is there anything you would have done differently when you started?  For example, should I think about trying to put a portion of income in a solo 401k, or is that even possible?  Does it make sense to get a property each year for the depreciation, additional tax shelters?

My goal is to build a nice income to live from in 10 years but if there are ways to tax shelter the income for longer that is fine too.  Thanks for any insight!