I've seen too many that prey on newbies and set them loose on the world, begging for "no money down" deals. 

The challenge of negotiating against a seller who purchased at the wrong time, invested with the wrong contractor and was losing money on the sale.

Quick money.

Don’t fall into the trap of being lured by good-looking cash flow numbers—those properties can become money pits.To wrap this up, my advice to clients is simple: Don’t overlook a solid duplex while chasing the dream of a better triplex or quadplex.Good luck! 

ONly money spent securing the house against waste.

I didn't have any money to invest at the time, and now I have a little saved away to start my real estate journey.

I also have $102k in a money market account that currently earns about 4.5%.

I have shown this via a study i have done which shows data from propstream and propwire are at least 2 weeks behind county/court/noitce records which are the source of 90% of off market motivated seller leads Take a look at my home page for more thorough explanation of what youare NOT getting when you use Propstream, Propwire, Propshark, PropRadar and the like.Also, propstream and propwire only provide, for at least FL, TX, CA, a third of the preforeclosure leads wich are available from  county/court/noitce records, so, if you want to be ahead of the pack in the off market world go to the source and you will save yourself a lot of time, money and aggrevation.How do you get the data from the county websites?

As you indicated yourself, it's mostly throwing away money because you have nothing left at the end of the lease.

. $500 is probably cheap money for the upgrade.