Keep the abundance mindset and dive in.Another option is to find an investor your admire in your market, and offer some sort of value-add to their business and/or life.

However, due to a job loss and my wife on extended maternity leave - we are less than attractive investors looking to buy.My question is, given this newly found abundance of time on my hands (with less than optimal finances available at the moment to invest), what would experienced RE investors recommend as a great avenue to get my feet wet and prepped for when I can buy and rehab my own properties while also helping build that nest egg to start?

Getting the accountant experience on your resume will make it easier as a contingency plan to fall back on with a quality salary if something ever happens in your future.If you're still wanting to gain real estate experience, I would definitely leverage the abundance of information here and potentially look at getting a real estate license to just gain more experience about markets and the process of real estate when you're not needing for it to make a meaningful amount of money right off the bat.

Yes, I would say that you need to go into that deal with an extreme abundance of caution and look at all the numbers twice and three times and have everyone else look at it.

Just sticking my head out to say hello and wish you an abundance of investment success.  

If des moines is anything like vegas we have an abundance or very well qualified applicants beating down the doors.

My husband wants to be near reasonably priced golf, and they seem to have a nice beach, an abundance of reasonably priced condos, and it's a safe and desirable area. 

To me it boils down to those with a scarcity mindset vs an abundance mindset.

Despite the seemingly abundant headlines about institutions diving head first into the single family housing market, they only control only 2% – 3% of single family rentals.

My impression of FIRE is that it's not a mindset of abundance.