At this point, it seems that keeping my assets in index funds offer more risk than reward at this point.

If you have underwritten properly and if you screen diligently, trust little and verify a lot, it can be a very rewarding jurney.

Specially now that a lot of people have some kind of food restriction. 

@Taylor Thompson  There are a few recent threads on this that are worth reading and may give you some food for thought.I didn't know you needed a college degree to be a firefighter or is that a degree? 

We would receive food stamps food from the church.

Being able to buy already established notes on property has been rewarding thus far.

Small sacrifice for huge rewards!

You will reap the reward in the years to come. 

And...you had better start believing that a lot of real estate investors lose money and many investors' egos cause them to inflate their profits even when their profits are negative.I will sit on my investment cash until the end of time when the risk-to-reward ration is not highly favorable.Overall, I will partner with someone like my woman friend who is super passive and since the day she invested in 2001 she never asked me one question about the book keeping, never visited one property and never asked one question about more than $2.5 million worth of remodeling that was done to the 3 buildings.

My concern is taking on debt to invest more into property and investments presumably could backfire and I am having difficulty identifying the point at which the risk not be worth the potential reward.