What matters most is how WELL your policy is designed so that you can minimize the length of time it takes to catch up to and surpass where you would have been had you simply taken your money and invested directly into whatever you were planning to do.

Now, we have surpassed that, and of course our end goal changed, but he is now part time at his job and we have more time to spend together as a family and do the things we like. 

On a side note, I never did understand why people were satisfied with the 1% rule (unless they were hell bent on staying in their local market) when there are plenty of markets around the country that surpass the 1% rule.

Actually I have an investment account that is growing and will surpass my total mortgage in a short while.

If picked wisely, you can target your rentals to locals, Portuguese migrants and foreigns.There is very little quality rental listings available, and the demand does also surpass the offer drastically, however this do not rise the rental value as much as , ex, Lisbon. 

We have about $50k in capital to spend and any costs that surpass that we would look for a hard money loan.The properties that we are seeing fall into two categories generally - fixer uppers that are priced at around 70-100k and more turnkey properties that are priced in the low to mid 200k region.We want to follow the BRRRR strategy, which would most likely push us to the larger rehab properties, but are not sure if a large rehab is the right move for two beginners in the real estate investment game.What are your thoughts?

But during this time, the increase in condos was surprisingly surpassed by the price increases for single- and two-family houses (what we call “duplexes”).

Here's the July report from Houston magazinehttps://houstonagentmagazine.com/2020/08/13/houston-home-sales-surpass-10000-july-setting-single-month-record/?

DOM is still low, pricing is either stable or increasing, and the amount of homes under contract still surpasses the amount of available inventory in many areas.  

I believe the difference in cash flow between a working class area and a white collar area narrows with time and it seems likely, with a long enough hold time, that the white collar area may eventually surpass the blue collar area in cash flow.There is a certain convenience to having many of our units in the same area/city.