401K Epiphany?

[Justin Trudell]

I think I might be blowing my own mind right now..."conventional" wisdom says max out your 401k contribution to lower your tax burden. 2013 was a good year for my 401k balance as the stock market was red hot (i have a 90% stock ratio because i'm still young), so I saw good returns on my investment. The more I'm reading about real estate investing, the more I'm thinking about reducing my 401k contributions to meet my employer match (reducing completely seems to be leaving money on the table) and diverting those funds to buy rental properties. If I can continue to get financing at 4-5% and see realistic returns of 12-15% cash on cash, I'm still getting a decent return and I'm still reducing my taxable income with the mortgage interest being a solid deduction.

It seems like this is a solid plan while I can still get conventional financing with only 20-30% down. May have to reconsider after the bank financing dries up.

Has anyone else been through this mental loop and come to the same or different conclusions?