My concerns are now she will not have a retirement through her employer which puts a lot of responsibility on me to make sure real estate works out and we can build enough for retirement. 

From a time perspective they have 20 years to go until they could retire, I retired the day I started doing a job, that most would wait until after retirement to do.To me real estate has proven to be the ultimate form of job security, I cannot be downsized, I dont have to hang around 10 years to get a raise, I am not a pawn on the board of someone elses pocket book.

I have about 20K in retirement, but it's not liquid.

Chase bank where I have my accounts will hold the cashiers check for so many days before crediting it.I wouldn't let any tenant move in until payment was verified.Chase has told me they have even had social security checks bounce from the government.I am not joking...............On what you can do to collect you first have to get a judgment.The in most areas you can go for a bank levy or a wage garnishemnt.For the bank levy you cannot touch social security,pension,or retirement funds.If those are pulled out the money will be reversed back to their accounts and credited.On a wage garnishment you can only collect up to 25% of income from their check and that's if they make over the federal poverty guidelines.If they don't make over the guidelines you can't do squat.If they make over 25% that is the total that can be taken out period.So if 2 garnishments are before yours you get what is left over out of that 25%.Generally the people will not stay at the job and will move to an all cash job to avoid the garnishment or they will file BK.There are collection companies that will buy the debt from you outright for very cheap or you can have an arrangement where they get so much of a percent of whatever they collect and the rest is yours.You can set it and forget it and put your time to other uses.Judgments are easy to get and very hard and time consuming to collect.The moral of the story is to screen your tenants very wisely and make sure the money is in hand.When I sell stuff on Craigslist I only take cash and I have a pen to check the bills.Some might call that over the top but I have never been scammed.Just like my friend said I was paranoid always looking for cops so I wouldn't get a ticket.My driving record is perfect and he has 2 tickets in the last year jacking up his insurance rates.no legal advice

I then helped her parents through the process and the rentals enabled him to make the transition to retirement very comfortably.

I have come across a deal with an investor that is looking to retire.

Our goal is early retirement in 15 years so we can do what we want with no economic stressors!

Our goal is to build a portfolio or as I say an "empire" of passive income to provide the cash flow needed for early retire in 15 years, wo we do work on furthering our careers.

I talk about our strategy and getting started with no money down in podcast 103 :) Over time we developed our strategy and build an "always evolving plan" towards our goal, of early retirement off the cash flow in 15 years.We are buy and hold investors who invest in class A properties self-managing from a distance while working full time.

A lot depends on what you really want out of your investments based on where you are in your life and possibly depending on your financial plans (early retirement, etc).