THe retirement is great, but my student loans are eating me alive today and I can not afford to go on vacation or do anything remotely exciting.

You'd really only have enough money to purchase a $50,000-100,000 property, which would eat up your entire $20,000 and you'd probably need more to make any repairs. 

Some owners just eat this cost if it is too low of an amount of claim on insurance. 

In today's market, 20% could eat most of your profit, so getting your cost of money down will make a big difference to your bottom line.

It's a little bit harder to take the food out of peoples mouths once they are already eating it as opposed to not giving it to them for free.

I view it as a "no eating in the library" rule.  

Happy to lend you $50K and i'll even let you pick the number between 1-10 for the interest rate of mine that begins with a 2 :)It sounds like you want your cake and eat it too (that's the saying right)?

That is normally what many do, but it eats into your returns. 

If you were trying to lose weight, would you eat a whole chocolate cake in one sitting??

No, because they have cable to pay, they have electric to pay, food to eat, going out to do, purses to buy.