There were problems right before closing that my agent expected I'd eat an expense that was in the contract on the sellers side.

It basically eats your profit and you pay less taxes. 

I would just eat the cost, personally!

As a buy and hold investor, you make money while you sleep, while you are backpacking in Europe, while you eat, etc.

I could demo the entire kitchen and eat take out for 2 weeks while I waited for the cabinets to arrive and get installed.

I know childcare is costly, we have 3 little ones and it certainly eats a chunk of income.

He doesn't want to give the money back so my GC ends up keeping the materials and eating the 3500 dollar loss.

Stone has to be done by hand now (no room to get machine by )   This alone has set the job back over 2 weeks closer to 3 , and added $9000 to the " budget "       Would I eat this as the contractor ?  

I guess I can't have my cake and eat it, too!

It's only a stepping stone to break free.While you are slaving, eat ramen, roommate up or live in trailer, avoid Starbucks and tuck every dollar you can squeeze out into a bank account. need 20% down and money for materials. so for 80K home (trashed), you will want 35K banked to get started, just a rough idea.Then, get pre-approved.