Tumeric, Black seed oil, Vitiman C and D (Sunlight) are all things we should be getting plenty of. 

This holds the seeds of destruction for ALL small investors, even cash investors ( not certain, but potential).

Have to plant those seeds to let the grow.

If you want to go out on your own, use that 4,000 as seed money, but It goes fast if you don’t sell a home.The most important thing is to invest in your self and be patient.

Instead I slowly planted seeds that allowed me to bring up REI without it sounding so scary.

Using your seed capital as a starting point, I would start with asking "do I want to be an active or passive investing AND what is the goal here or what does success look like? 

If you're looking for cash-flowing markets with some appreciation, there're 20 cities in the USA that has > 1.0 rent/value ratio by default.I put my seeds in multiple cities for cash flow and one in highly appreciativemarket.

I chose to go with REI because I wanted to plant the seeds (properties) and let them grow (appreciation) so I can reap the benefits sooner rather than waiting to pay off my student debt.

A great take-way here is you dug in and saved your pennies hard early on - you did not start RE with nothing - and then once you had enough seed, took it as hard as you could.What a great success story.

Even if you don't get the money now, you're at least planting seeds and they may come around deal #3, and #4. 3.