Will you get deployed and see crazy stuff..maybe, really depends on what your job is.

If heat goes out in the winter we drop off several units, so they can be placed in different parts of the house - including every room with water like kitchen and bathrooms.We also have dehumidifiers, carpet blowers, shop vacs, puddle-sucker pumps, extra hoses, extra sump pumps with battery pack, squeegees, and portable AC units ready to deploy. 

Even if you then turn around and liquidate the 401(k), paying the 10% penalty and taxes, it's probably advantageous to take the match at the very least.The trap for those pursuing super early financial freedom, like before 40 years of age, is that the money in retirement accounts is a bit harder to deploy opportunistically, and people do not intend to use that money as part of their plan for early financial freedom.

One of your risks is that you get the money first and then get into bad deals because you think you have a need to deploy the money you borrowed. 

Unfortunately, my service was cut short due to an injury during deployment, which required spine surgery.

That way it's accessible and ready to deploy when you're ready.

With that, we became the American Association of Private Lenders—and we began spreading the word.Finally, Some DefinitionsUnderpinning the concept of minimizing the use of “hard money” in our industry is a recurring theme of standardization—that the root of the issue is too many interpretations of what the same terms mean.We offer up the following definitions for discussion, debate, fine-tuning, and eventual consensus [last updated 5/9/2022]:Private lender: Any non-depository individual or entity that primarily originates business-purpose loans secured by hard assets, generally real estate.Hard money lender: A subset of private lender where creditworthiness is determined solely by the securing real estate collateral.Correspondent lender: A subset of private lender where the closed loan is sold to investors.Portfolio lender: A subset of private lender where the closed loan remains in the lender’s portfolio.Fund manager: A subset of private lender where, depending on the fund structure, the deployed capital is sourced by offering exempted securities to accredited and occasionally non-accredited private investors.Private investor: An individual or entity that seeks a return by deploying capital through a private lender or fund; the investor may or may not be named on the loan’s promissory note.Private money broker: Any individual or entity that acts as an intermediary between a borrower and a private lender without directly originating the loan.

There are so many strategies you can deploy depending on your goals going forward. 

I would really like to hear from someone who has deployed their tactics and completed a deal to get a view of the full range of experience with them.

Again, the goal is to work with them early on to prepare them for the refi within 5 years.As to capital deployment, that is the advantage of the fund model.