We have 5 basic needs above survival needs like air, food, water. 

but that’s how you have to be sometimes if you want to survive .

Local landlords who do it for a living and choose to take on these management issues can and do make it work.. someone thinking this is passive income to financial freedom simply does not know what they don't know you cant have passive income and financial freedom when your tenant base is so severely limited in cash credit and basic ability to live and survive.. 

One more benefit of saving is that there is a security in knowing that if something crazy happens to us and we can't work/ get fired/ have a huge unexpected expense: we can survive it without going into debt. 

Make sure you have enough equity in these properties to survive another real estate market crash.

It depends on how you define wealth.For Derek Sall, a personal finance blogger and financial analyst who paid off $116,000 in seven years, it's not about how much money you bring in each month but how much you're able to save.He says you need to ask yourself only one simple question to determine whether you're wealthy: If you lost your job tomorrow, how long could you survive?

I went to engineering school and soon will get my own masters because of all this.My point is priorities change.  2 generations ago it was working endlessly to survive, now I can focus on building the kind of generation changing wealth most people never get the chance to do.  

To my memory the debate ended up overwhelming favoring an investment in NYC if one had the means to do that and did not need rental income to survive.

Anyone who was poised to survive the 2008 crash and used that time to expand instead of lick wounds likely got BIGGER rather than smaller.

They will do whatever it takes to survive as that's all they have.