Are you looking to just put the money to work or looking to be personally involved in getting, rehabbing, and dispo of deals?

They would be putting in some money and their service as sweat equity, and we would be putting up money and my wife’s services. 

I enjoy hearing about peoples’ personal wins and innovative, creative strategies.  

He doesn’t even need the money; he just wants to give back / pay forward. “ . 

Let's say you split the cost of furniture over a 12 month period amortization rate.Furniture costs: $583Rent $1500Utilities $150Total Cost = $2233After vacancy costs, your monthly rental revenue is actually only $2240 Formula for vacancy (2800*12)*.80You're not making money. 

Military deployment money Lessons learned?

@Geoff Engel If you don't want to be a landlord but still want to be involved with investing you could be a private money lender for flips or in partnerships and bring the money to the deal.

I know they raised a lot of money though

If you have a chunk of money to get going I'd personally buy the biggest thing you can if you don't I think house hacking into a 4 plex is great. 

So your super basic P&L may look like: $30,000 Rents-$3,000 insurance expense -$9,000 interest-$3,000 taxes-$8,000 operating expenses-$14,000 depreciation ----------------$7,000 loss on paper for the year  so negative taxable income But remember- $14k of that (depreciation) was something we didn't actually spend money on- so cash in bank at year end would be $7,000.