As I said in my post right above this one, I am fairly excited to take out my first, second, and maybe even third mortgages in my local area in 2014 using interest rates in the 4.xx% range, 25% down on 30 year notes, holding for 25 years until I retire, which thus sounds like now would be a "good time to buy."

You can use IRA, retirement funds, and equity accounts but they will get chopped by 30%.

I retired quite early from a career in IT with the US Courts with a small annuity and some savings in our 401K type plan.

Also, my wife has a few people in her family that live in Martinsburg and are contractors who have said they would take tenant "emergency" calls for me.My goal is to have a handful of nice rentals that will be paid off when I retire at 50 (I'm 29 now).

I am no longer with that employer, but the funds are still managed by the company's designated retirement funds manager, which is JP Morgan.

@Adam Craig Hey Adam, I got into RE investing by purchasing a home that I was thinking would be my retirement home and I wanted others to pay for it (why not right?).

My mom is getting within a couple years of retiring.

IMO, if you could have done something else with that money that could have earned you a higher return on your money (the return you got was the interest rate on the retired loan basically), then maybe not the best use of the money.

Hi Derek - I figured you'd be retired now given how well bitcoin has done.

None of us are going to retire on our 401s.