But I will firmly stand behind the statement that providing education and doing RE investing are two different businesses.And I will also state that I do think there are many "educators" in this business who provide very little value for the amount of money they extract from their "students".

Based on the prior two sentences, I would be cautious about retail priced investing, which is what there is unless you know how to extract a property from an owner w/o market forces at work... meaning buying from a seller who is not ready, willing, or able to sell.

We have bought houses, cars, flat screens, beach condos, etc. and financed the purchases either by extracting the equity from our increasing home prices (home equity lines) or incurring additional debt through credit cards and other forms of consumer finance.

I have an Oregon property owner who is in the hemp industry and extracts the oils and sells them pharmaceuticals that sell the oil to cancer patients.  

The key to longevity in this and any other business is to make sure that you are always delivering more value than you are extracting, and value has many different forms ... if you do that consistently for long enough, then you will not need to search for business or deals, because they will find you.

Option 1: I invest my money in 401k/IRA accounts, but it may be more difficult to extract that money in order to invest in real estateOption 2: I keep piling my money in my savings account and I have easy access to it when I need it; however, the value of my money is decreasing because I am losing to inflationOption 3: ???

There is no way to extract water and avoid mold.

Rick Rick,Am i understanding this to mean refinace to extract any excess equity?

Off the top of my head, I would say 80% of the homes we renovated get new roofs and new HVAC, which is a deferred expense of 15 to 20 years, to which at that time, the tenants have paid down the mortgage enough and time has played its part enough for the owner to have the option to extract a little equity out to replace capital expenses instead of sacrificing 48 months of cash flow to replace AC, Furnace and Roofs.

I have never understood how seemingly rational people can expect to extract intrinsic value out of these products when you have to be smarter than TENS OF THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS of other people to do so.