I’m currently continuing to further educate myself whilst accumulating funds to begin investing.

As a result, this summer, I'm finally going to be taking action and applying all of the knowledge that I've accumulated over these past several months and truly igniting my vehicle to reach my goals.

From there you can easily trade your accumulated equity for small ownership shares of companies or bonds in a sensible split and use a tool like cFIREsim to precisely model the behavior of your portfolio for hundreds of periods with different economic climates.  

The loan accumulates on the back-end (ie increasing the principle) and thus easily takes the property upside-down :(Which debts are settled first ??

Most people I know would not consider that a sound investment and as a result they sit on their hands and wait years until something better falls in their lap or they accumulate more money. 

Scrooge was considered financially free, but he loved his money so much, the accumulation of wealth made him not financially free.  

My wife and I are currently finding out that the cash flow coming from our SFR's is plenty as we build our portfolio and the more we accumulate we will then be adding in 4-plexes and then apartments.

Liquidity...and the power of compounding future investments with the 30 year mortgage, that you don't have with the 15.Example:30 year mortgages - 3 years 4 months, CF = $20k accumulated. 

A greedy, selfish person accumulates as much as he can and refuses to share no matter how much or how little he has.The money matters little.

I would keep that 500 dollars and keep adding 10% of my paycheck to that balance and accumulate a good chunk of change until I can really start!