Supposedly that Mediterranean diet will help your brain health too.Only 20% of the US population smokes and that decreases as income goes up so I you probably won't see alot of smoking investors.

Life insurance policies - looks like it's best to start with several and cancel some of them as your debt decreases and you have long term loan positions with good cashflow.  

Whether to jump in now depends not only on interest rates but several factors including where you are financially, do you think values will increase or decrease over the next 2-5 years and will the investment provide you with a better return than investing the $ somewhere else.?

Put the profit from the home into a low risk investment or use it to decrease the amount of the mortgage on your next home.

Ft Myers has been stable and steadily increasing rents.Cape Coral was decreasing rents for several months but stabilized.

But we are paying all that back down, so as our balances decrease and we get farther away from that missed payment we will be able to get a loan on the house we inherited and use that to get us going on some income properties or maybe a flip.

Trade off is a higher rate though, so your cash flow would decrease. 

But as you put more money down you decrease the power of leverage generally lowering your overall ROI.

On the equity side by increasing net income and or decreasing risk, on the debt side by “working” the note.  

Get it rented and figure out what went right and what went wrong.Based on that first experience figure out what strategies you want to employ in the future to increase your returns/decrease your work load.