It is a modest, diverse blue collar town.

You can tell it worked when their name turns blue.  

At least thats my advice.I truly believe that the people that are picking up houses atthese prices are really going to make a generational changein their finances that most of us wouldn't have the opportunityto do any other way.To me, real estate investing is one of the few remaining "blue-collar" ways to get ahead financially.

It's entertaining to boat through the chain of lakes, but after a while all of the multi million dollar houses pretty much look the same ( minus Shaq's - he's got 65k sf of blue tile roof ).

I want to go NOW, but I am still trying to wrap my blue collar brain around using massive debt as a tool.

However, if you're trying to flip and do this full-time and you're new, I'd just diversify your funds into different asset types (blue chip stocks, bonds, ETFs, etc) and like Jay said, look also into syndication deals.

We have three colors that we use for everything- a white, grey and a mellow blue.

I was happy but also a bit sick to my stomach.not only was it $800, but they wanted a complete sewer line replacement... out of the blue. 

I'd suggest considering looking a bit further up the blue line. 

Or any other light neutral color (blue, grey, etc.).