Ya this mentor should never have taken half of your life savings .. or like others who encourage folks to go into CC debt.paid for training can be a good thing.. but bottom line is you need capital to invest in real estate .. how are you going to make that capital back.the only way would be to do transnational real estate IE become and agent and make nice big commissions but even at that you need a years worth of income stashed away..I like your other idea  buy a house to live in .. you can find almost all gurus written materials and CDs extra on E bay for 20 to 50 bucks.. from students who never used it.

He wants to just wait until our year is up in this property and just focus on paying down debt and stashing for savings.

But I’ve been able to stash some money away working these last few years and am ready to get going!

So we have 99 more to go.Our short term goal is to fix and flip and use some of those proceeds to purchase rental properties and stash some cash in the bank.

My applications are stashed somewhere, out of sight.  

Most of them refuse the money but I always at least stash some gift cards around their houses before I leave :)

It is an absolute grind but has allowed me to stash up a nice amount of cash.  

You may be greatly skilled at fixing houses or have a nice saving stash ready and waiting along with a list of vendors on hot standby.

I have been saving like crazy and have a good stash of cash in the bank to start really looking into commercial properties.

I already have a 401k with employer matching, a Stash account with about a thousand dollars, and plenty of savings.