So ideally if you eventually get rents to market value by increasing at $250 per month you'd be up to $5300 gross per month.  

My goals here is to learn and eventually help out as much as I can.

However, if your spouse is just a bit uneducated, you could start your journey alone, and he could eventually follow.The last option would be similar to my own.  

Then eventually building a portfolio of multi units like yourself. 

Then when servicer asks for financials over and over again from home owner and keeps making the process difficult eventually the seller mid process gives up emotionally and the short sale fails.With a short sale you have to figure out what kind of loan it is FHA,VA, conventional,etc.

If your tenant's monthly rent is only covering the mortgage and you aren't paying for property management and you aren't accounting for major repairs, you are eventually going to be in the red.

Eventually, I want to retire.Rentals are slower money.

I want to start out renting and then eventually get into flipping but need help deciding the best way to get in using the least amount of my own money.I have found plenty of properties in the upstate SC area but with me not jumping in all of the other experienced investors with money are snatching them up.

I hope that I will eventually reach a point (maybe 10 houses) where I can begin a debt snowball that would allow me to pay off each mortgage in succession once I've got a pretty nice cash reserve built for repairs & capex.10 paid off houses cash flowing $500-$600 a month with 100% equity in each would allow me to generate about 72k before taxes on an annual basis.  

It might strike them as odd, but they are proposing to eventually become a 50/50 partner in one of your businesses ...