You can enter lottery in December of each year. 

I am currently in the planning phase of my real estate investment journey and had a few questions I’d like to ask someone more experienced.Would it be smarter to focus on paying down my own mortgage and then use a HELOC as a down payment for my first investment property, or should I simply use my savings for the down payment instead?

On the other hand, I’m hesitant to simply pay down more of a property, as we don’t need the immediate cash flow.Fortunately, both my wife’s job and mine are recession-proof, which allows us to be a bit more aggressive with our investments.I’d really appreciate advice from investors who have experience with frequent moves or military service.

Quote from @Aaron Raffaelli: As the title suggests, I am just starting to enter the REI world.

Cash for keys is definitely the best way to get people out in the day when I was very active at court houses steps cash for keys was by far the best way to get folks to move and bad tenants in a state with bad eviction laws to me would be the preferred method. you simply pay them when they are leaving the house not before.. that works fine and you give them more than 1k .. you make it worth their while..

Even though I skipped the tenant input and invitation screen, the system still sent out messages after I later entered email address in the tenant data profile.Do other property management platforms operate in autopilot?

I'll settle for a variation of this and give a little, but I simply pass on PMs who hand me a term sheet with 10+ different types of fees.

Effectively good egg is simply a P.O. box that takes a Commission out of your hard earned/saved money, in return, for purportedly providing due diligence to vet the potential projects and sponsors, on your behalf.

UW is only as good as the numbers that are entered into the data cells. 

Based on the information provided, you can only claim a capital loss when you actually sell or dispose of your REIT investment, not when the REIT simply returns a portion of your principal.