But ultimately the responsibility lies in my hands.I jumped on a seesaw of risk hoping that the momentum would catapult my bank account into six figures only to find out the hard way that flipping houses isn’t as easy as I had predicted.This house was purchased for $64,000 with an expected rehab of $100k to $120k depending on how much work the dilapidated and neglected house needed.The midwest is lovely but the houses carry the weight of weather storms nearly a century old leading to more damage than a beginning investor could expect.The appraisal came in at $225k for my lender meaning our all-in cost would be around 85% of the sales price worst case.

After dealing with this situation for quite some time I started studying scams, frauds then human behavior then cults.

Do you see why we accountants say "likely" and "possibly" in every paragraph we write?

I'd hate for a temporary dip in the quality of the tenant pool to be giving my landlord "spidey sense" false alarms on account of taking an extra month or two to fill a unit.

Study the market.

Like Jake Baker suggested, keep good records and have a dedicated bank account for your property, properly separating personal and business expenses.

One consideration as you are working on locating private lenders, is that IRA, 401(k), and other retirement accounts can be used in many cases to make private money loans.

It keeps me accountable and helps me to refine and define my plans while gaining different perspectives.

If you are on cash accounting, yes you could do that.On the other hand, you are ignoring carry-forward losses. 

Day traders are not exempt unless they elect mark-to-market (MTM) accounting, which eliminates wash sale tracking but taxes gains as ordinary income.To manage taxes, track trades closely, avoid overlapping purchases, or consider MTM election if trading actively.