I don't eat out a lot or go on fancy vacations (I do travel), I don't buy a new car every 4-5 years (I do keep it up, but my first car was ~20 years old when I traded it in this spring). 

If these are even an average sized breed they can eat through a lot of food in a day/week/month.So the first thing is to get yourself financially stable.

Otherwise, the DST fees eat up the tax Ruthie- Yes they are in control for when the property is sold.

Now that I'm retired I "eat" some of the profits, but because I did this for so long while I was working my total leverage is about 25-30% with a bunch of properties free and clear.

The tenants have paid and if someone is thinking about moving out then an extra surcharge that hits if they aren't out in time for us to turn the place for a lucrative AirBNB short term rental can help massage the move out timing.That said with MTR we do not have the cleaning costs that eat up a lot of STR gross, and its lower hassle in some ways.  

I’m eating breakfast and adding thoughts as they pop in my head. 

How do you eat an elephant?

One capex issue or tenant turnover is going to eat up years of "cashflow".I would advise you to work on getting a smaller number of high quality units rather than scaling to 20.

Well that's what you did, you announced your "hungry" and "who's got something good to eat for me to buy"Having commanding market intelligence is absolutely necessary. 

You probably won't like it but, hey, you can't always have your cake and eat it too.