My understanding is Heloc since its a line of credit can be drawn anytime so say you buy the property with and the ac goes on a heloc you could use that to pay for it where the home equity has a period/ gives all the cash upfront.

my condolences on your recent lost.there are a few ways you can do this, as mentioned above you can take a heloc on your primary residence which will give you a second mortgage, first mortgage payment wont be impacted. you can do cash out refinance which will give you one mortgage and payment. it will pay the old mortgage and give you money in your pocket to pay for the rehab.or you can do a renovation refinance which is similar to cash out refinance but we would contractor involved  as part of the refinancing and they are paid through the loan

I am new to Bigger Pockets. 

Highly suggest coming out to some of the local chicago IN-PERSON meetups! 

I think the folks that pay for these programs have the wherewithal to simply cut a check and its no big expense to them compared to what they stand to get out of it. 

My concern is doing the cash out refi on my other rental and causing a new and much higher payment on it that I can't just pay off like a loan.

I do all of this remotely, so I use the above process to filter out 90% of the properties and then send the other 10% to my local team for verification.

Or should I invest regardless of student loans if my hope is to use FHA loan for smaller downpayment and then eventually rent the house out in a few years once I move?

It's not the same as kicking your own mother out onto the streets.

We were getting a total of $2,700 per month for both of those renters combined.When my wife and I moved out of the house, our first 2 years of owning it we were bleeding money on the home.