Get on a budget, build your emergency fund, pay off all debts, save up.

so, you're maxing out debt service which makes it tougher to cash flow.with that said, no matter the purchase strategy, you should always make sure you're using actual numbers, and not random assumptions.for example - some people will throw out '10% for capex.' 

we invest in defaulted debt and have looked at it in the past.

Also, in order to get financing the lender wouldn’t allow SCI to dramatically overpay or they wouldn’t meet the debt service requirements.

Love getting the person that has zero debt to start the game.

For instance if this is a $10M portfolio that's levered with loans totaling $9.1M, there's no equity that can be pulled but if this is a $1M portfolio with $100K of debt, its a different story.

And it’s about to be very personal to you as the one who is going to be responsible for it, and maybe have a significant debt to pay back on it.The vast majority of business owners selling their business genuinely want to see it continue to succeed, even if it has no monetary impact on them.

That is the issue I am having now as my wife and I have great paying jobs and just cleared all our debt.

You would only pay taxes on all passive investments in a traditional SDIRA at distribution, unless you have a mortgage, then the portion of the income derived because of the mortgage will be subject to UDFI (unrelated debt finance income) which will trigger UBIT (unrelated business income tax). 

We’re trying to invest with a long term mindset with as little debt as possible.