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)?

I just got a house under contract in a medium size city in Missouri. I'd like to build a buy and hold portfolio in this city. It's not likely, but it's not impossible a tornado could level this city, destroying my ent...

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

I, too, want my retirement nest egg to grow faster than afforded by stocks & mutual funds.

or someone whose abilities and honesty is worthy of trusting with your entire purchase-investment in the property, your expected holding costs for the time it takes to re-sell the property,  and maybe your nest egg, too. 

Basically, it's as if she and you are both starting at the beginning of your RE journeys, to find out whether she/you would be better off investing for appreciation (eg. buying property that should be ALREADY worth more than you pay for it, AND it's due to keep going up in value too, but, won't generate much net cash flow), or, buying for cash flow (in areas where appreciation has not happened historically, but are still golden egg locations for double digit net rent returns). 

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