I'm still raising children as a stay at home mom, but I'd like to get into real estate investing more full time.

We paid ourselves nothing and worked 80-hour weeks of hard labor in order to know that when the day comes when we have children, we can give them and our wives all they need and more while only working as much as we want to.Some may say we could have leveraged sooner — even at the beginning.

Linens, dishes, furniture.

@Eric Castelli, well you've heard how a furniture store doing a credit pull the last week of escrow can screw things up, right?

The off season for the beach was double or longer what I have here in Gatlinburg and would see the lower end rental with the bright pink and orange walls and 90's furniture rent time and time again while the nicer higher end homes would sit.

When my husband and I started purchasing properties, the goal was not really to invest but to respond to changes in our lives (eg. children need to go to better schools, child going to college, retirement, etc.).  

Does anyone know a wholesale furniture in Arizona store that we could work with?

We are in our 30's but would like to use real estate investing to start planning for our retirement, adopt more children and pay for our children's education. 

I've read a couple books, attended a couple seminars and have done a fair amount of interent research on REI, and I do believe REI will be the vehicle to a brighter future for me and my wife and hopefully a legacy for my children. 

Do that a few times to defer your depreciation then leave the property to your children after you pass, they get a stepped up cost basis and thus you can avoid taxes all together (only downside is you're dead by then).