I guess I'm at a point where it makes sense to me to start to take risk off of the table ( I'm aware stock investing is risky, I'm mostly talking about paying down the 7.5% mortgage) and would love to hear from people with the same mindset.

Some of these strategies include:1031 ExchangeA 1031 exchange is a classic strategy to defer capital gains and depreciation recapture by rolling properties into a like-kind property.

I would probably start by doing an analysis of all options on the table. 

Classic investor play.

If inflation averages 5%, below is a table showing how much less groceries you can afford in the future.In 10 years, $100 will only buy 63% of what you can purchase today for $100.

don't let that happen.I want my clients to learn the basic first; Power prospecting and negotiating, if you can't negotiate you can't do deals, in my opinion this the best way to have your way with sellers, I go into details of expired listings, For sale by owners, how to do second stage and sometime 3rd stage negotiation, how to make offers and how to make offer often.Creative financing is a must to learn, lease option Control and Roll and hybrid offers, nothing down, delayed settlements, no money in the deal using "Check Funds", seller financing, how to ask for it, how to get sellers to agree, no interest mortgage, how to offer more and create more equity and ease assignments.Most importantly "contracts" I use what I call a "skinny contract offer" this is a one page document that has all the creative clauses needed to CONTROL the property with a small down payment.I want my clients to understand that it is easy to find and control properties, but a needed skill to assign it, get to the settlement table and collect your fee.

I saved a bunch of cash, also took cash from my retirement accounts & brought it to the table.

More than once we have bought a second property at the closing table where we asked, "Do you have any others you want to sell?"  

The problem lies when you forget to add the HELOC because if you go to apply for the HELOC and you dont live there any more your LTV will go from 90-95% down to 70-75% maximum which means you'll be leaving about 20% of your equity's access on the table  (idle equity). 

Perhaps I misunderstood your response to @Joe S. but having  to bring new collateral to the table in order to sell/release properties is not ideal.