It's nice getting a portion of the rent direct deposited on time, and the tenants I have experience with are religious about paying their portion on time. 

Above all the belief in the attainment of wealth through persistence and faith.

It's also hard to just rid yourself of those close people that are negative but what I've done is find new people that had similar goals and beliefs and allow their opinions to push me along and at least balance the positive and negative.

Counter to belief large corporations love regulations because they can afford to comply with them while their smaller competitors cannot. 

I think Northern Californians are more "spiritual," while SoCalers, are more "religious."

But that's more of a political bias than any rational belief.

Fernando Cardona As others have said you should run the numbers and see what makes sense.But you should definitely not have the limiting belief that you have to follow the traditional path of owning your own primary before you start buying rentals.

I'm not religious, nor am I espousing any religion, but:"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference".Anything I do is not going to change whether the economy takes a dump or not.

I'm not looking to live by someone else's beliefs. 

It is my personal belief that places with a higher cost of living force people to become more creative and competitive which pushes us to become like a super-saiyan version of ourselves.