A really successful investor friend of mine once told me "be like a farmer plant seeds, water and nuture it,  and the harvest will come" I wish you all the success in your real estate endeavors :)

I run my portfolio fairly tightly and as such carve off spec capital for seed funding, PE, and in this case crypto.

Saving money is like keeping the seed of a plant in your pocket and just walking with it everywhere.

This home will be my seed for future investing and I'd like it done right.

Account Closed - real estate books are great for planting the initial seed and outlining steps and strategies but you'll always feel like you don't know enough... that you need to read one more book or learn one more strategy. 

Basically, I’ve been planting seeds for the last few years.

cut the lawn, seed it, trip some bushes, put a sign on it.

However, when discussing saving seed money/down payments with her she starts to become a little defensive about our current position.

Keep your seed capital close, and perhaps invest in a foreign currency that may not be as badly affected by an impending financial crash. 

Not easy to do but if you build a relationship with someone who will lend you that there's no better person than the realtor who understands that their deposit is completely safe.So assuming that you can actually come up with the $5000, it becomes your seed that will grow into a millions upon millions of dollars.