Rentals create cash flow, and that's what we want as real estate investors, but you need cash on hand for unforeseen circumstances.The AC needs to be replaced, that's $7K to $10K or more depending on the size of the house and if you have one rental, it will eat all your cash flow, same to replace a roof, etc, or if tenant trash the home, you need money to fix it again.To me personally a nice rental portfolio that is healthy consists about 10 units, so if you have an issue with a house the portfolio can cover the repairs and still healthy, but when starting you need to have cash on hand just in caseYes, there are multiple strategies you can use to hack your way to buy your first rental with minimum cash, but I would start wholesaling or fix and flip a few deals to create that cash as fast as possible

Also is insurance premiums eating up cash flow? 

If you hire a professional management company, then that of course will also eat into your profits.

If I want to eat healthier, I assign more points to the positive habit I want to focus on, but also reward myself for NOT doing that bad habit.

Termites don't eat metal and you cant pull a house with it so isn't that a better more solid construction than a wood subframe set on the foundation?

As my Dad always said, 'There is no eating ice cream in hell- get outta there...

It's pretty common to obtain 100% financing for both the purchase and rehab funds after you've been doing this for a while.Borrowing, of course, is a two-edged sword because your interest payments, especially for a hard money loan, can eat 1/4 to 1/3 of your profit.

@Austin Berlick,There are essentially two ways to outsource the grunt work of “landlording”—unfortunately, both will eat into your margins.The first is to hire a professional property management company—this will cost you between 5% and 15% of rents, plus surcharges for out-of-scope services.

Also know that turns are costly and will eat into your profits like an alligator.

Unless your mechanically handy your maintenance costs will eat you up.