Hello @Scott Davis,I understand your focus on initial ROI, but there is more to consider.I believe the goal of real estate investing is a passive income that gets you off the daily worker treadmill.

A treadmill, elliptical, and maybe some weights/kettle bells?

Your description of having lots of money/things yet still feeling unfilled rings of the Hedonic treadmill: "the tendency of a person to remain at a relatively stable level of happiness despite changes in fortune or the achievement of major goals.

If you sign up, but never hit the treadmill, you won't get results.

Or did he get behind the eight ball once and now has spent years stuck on the treadmill?

Just point out the greater risk of not changing your current trajectory (a good way to do this is to make a long term financial plan based on maintaining your current income/spending patterns for the next 20 years- that's usually enough to shock most people into action)It's true that some people never get off the earn/consume treadmill.

But sometimes your treadmill will stop.

It's like buying a treadmill, thinking it's going to make it easier to get in shape. 

And neither will most posters here who cant get off the debt treadmill.

However, their motives for doing so are to keep you on the perpetual treadmill of debt.