To maintain his current lifestyle he would like to supplement that income with ~$30k/year from his 401k. 

When you get on Medicare drop it and buy ONLY a Medicare Supplement plan G/N.

something that could help you supplement your real estate income.  

The idea of supplementing your mortgage has become more wide spread and has heavily increased the interest in those properties.

You are basically using the rented unit to supplement you monthly payment as opposed to eliminating it.

I'm looking at possible rental income to supplement as in not flipping but I'm also not sure if those money is better invest in brokerage or both.

Option 1: Be patient and save for the next 2 years (I’d rather not wait this long if there’s another viable option)Option 2: Seek private money and go 50/50 on first deal (I can see how this could be complicated with the BRRRR approach, so any insights on what did/didn’t work from your experience partnering with an individual investor on a BRRRR deal would be appreciated)Option 3: Supplement cash with HELOC on primary residence (50ish cash/50ish HELOC, and pay HELOC back before repayment period)Option 4: Supplement cash with hard money (50ish cash/50ish hard money)Option 5: Supplement cash with cash out refi on primary residence mortgageOption 6: any other ideas on on ways you successfully funded your first BRRRR property :)

If we do walk away from the franchising opportunity, I will need to supplement income via a 9-5 job until the REI business is up and running.

Do you supplement your tenants electric bill when using these?

I just got 365K of easily accessible funds to supplement my rental property Helocs and my own available cash, basically eliminating my need for accessing hard money for any size deals I'm currently comfortable pursuing.