We are proud of the choices that we have made and continue to make day to day decisions to live well below our means and invest a large portion of our expendable income into our futures. 

Bottom line is, how much time, money and energy do I expend on this before I say "I can't find a leak.

My goal is to use that extra income before life settles down too much and I don't have this extra expendable income

Not sure what the gap between those two dates are) will be added to the property basis, and whatever you spent after that could be expended. 

What are your thoughts on the best financing strategy for someone who doesn't want to expend all their cash just on a project?

I don't know much about construction, and (at the moment) I'm not a powerhouse of expendable capital to just begin investing (we have a little more debt left to pay off, and want to save up to start investing after that).

But before this virus hit I was not at death's door and I hate it when people treat us like we are expendable.

Having additional buffer these days is not a bad thing.Paying down debt is good in theory, but if you can't pay off your balance in full then you have expended your cash without improving your cash flow.

That makes most of our income expendable.

But in the end, it’s probably not going to be worth it to sue him, so there’s only so much effort you should expend on him.