I already have an Equity Trust account with an old Roth IRA but they do not offer checkbook control.

Also does not report to credit or affect debt to income.Risky option - do a IRA or 401k rollover to your checking account.

With financial advisors or planners, they have to be certified to help people invest and make investment decisions as far IRAs, Roth IRAs, brokerage accounts.

I am trying to figure out if I should also max out my own personal Roth IRA in the S&P or just use all my money towards RE.

Maybe chat with a financial advisor and have them help you set up an IRA and throw 25k directly into that on a high/medium/low-risk level and watch that slowly grow as a slush fund for further investments. 

. - We maximize our 401K, 403b, HSA, Roth IRA, and 457 accounts. - We have 230K in high yield saving account, and we're saving around additional 8K/month from our net income. - We have 2 children (ages 9 and 11).

I had a potential investor face a similar situation, and I’ve found that there are often more restrictions when investing from a 401k compared to an IRA.

Instead we refer our clients to Solera bank, they have dedicated department for IRA/401k clients so if you contact them - you will be speaking with a rep experienced with this types of accounts.

For my own situation, I don't plan to pay down my mortgages since I'm getting 9% to over 20% (I don't expect this ROI to continue for the long term) return on my brokerage and IRA accounts.

Or does everything need to come from the IRA?