First mortgages involves loss mitigation (occupied 1st) and asset management (vacant 1st).

Trust me; you don't want to miss those crucial dates and risk losing money or even blowing the whole deal.

While I understand the risks associated with investing in areas unfamiliar to you, my budget forces me to do so.

It's a high risk strategy that you've chosen. 

Decide how involved in real estate you want to be.

I know what my ideal life looks like in ten years, unfortunately, I don’t feel like I can have my ideal life now because I am having to stay in the state that I am in until we can move without risk of my husband losing custody of his child, which will be in about 10 years so believe it or not I do spend a lot of time thinking about what I want the future to be like.

Hi, pre foreclosure in all of its permutations, before the bank sends Notice of Default (NOD) or efter which is state even county dependant but often starts a 4 week clock till the trustee auction are the 2nd most difficult deal scenario and IMHO only experienced investors should bother, the 1st most difficult deal scenario are bidding at the court house steps on lord only knows what is being auctioned off sometimes even 2nd mortgages, you need to do so much home work to attempt to reduce your risk at the court house steps...Pre foreclosure no one talks about these issues, always about the nice sounding stuff like "motivated seller" get a good deal etc etc both are usually not the case.- 95% of folks in pre or post NOD want to stay in their house, keep their house inspite of them 100% will loose the house at the auction. 

Many would suggest against RE investing using retirement money but if you go into low risk opportunities it can be a powerful diversification method.

They unleashed pandemic handouts and loan programs that greased the economy (this was not well thought out, contributed to the inflationary environment we are still suffering from and PPP and ERP loans were flooded with fraudulent loans and benefits)These programs leveraged existing corporate infrastructure (banks and the government had little or no operational involvement). 

@Wiley HoodYes, there're risks:1.