If your plan is only buy appreciating properties and gambling on the market to keepGoing up, we all saw what happened to those investors in 2008.

Gambling on yourself in REI by liquidating your retirement without first having any experience, is very bad advice, imo. 

But these come rarely.Do you really want to gamble with your money time and effort on luck?

Don't know don't care.You are gambling with a lot of time and effort and if you are anything like me?

Thank you.It does vary quite a bit from street to street, but no matter how you slice it, it's a gamble in that area.

Maybe Seattle will appreciate more, maybe it'll slow down or even go backwards for awhile, but if you're not cash flowing in the meantime it sounds like that's a gamble that's more trouble than it's likely worth.

Drugs, alcohol, gambling, abuse.  

I am a Muay Thai/MMA coach.

In my mind $8k is more money than I'm willing to gamble with and the course felt like too much of a gamble (let's put it this way..

but in my view it makes a relatively "safe" investment in cash flowing real estate into a gamble on appreciation.