@Jason White,My first impulse is to say no matter how much you have available you'll want to invest for income in retirement to ensure that your money is growing at such a rate that you drawing your living expenses from it will not deplete the principal during your expectable lifetime.You may want to read up on self-directed retirement accounts and other ways of being a private money lender.My personal thoughts on buying property with no loans is that its roughly equivalent to gambling in the Wall Street Casino.

The only shortcuts are ones like walking into a Vegas casino and risking way too much.

those areas are closer to the river (casinos), closer to 95...northern liberties is a trend thats on its downside considering the amount of money pouring into the area over the past decade is just criminal....kinda tough to get in there for a profit.if you are stuck on a multi-family in north philly...look around temple.

My friends sit around and smoke cigars with me and we ***** about living in Cook County when free America is 30 minutes away and they ***** about their job at JP Morgan Chase and I ***** about no profit in contracting and we both ***** about how we're not getting enough cashflow and they ***** about how their Logan Square condos that aren't performing and then we ***** about the new Bond theme song that isn't as good as the one from Casino Royale and then we see a hot girl walk by and then we ***** about why hot girls congregate in blue states and then we talk about guns.

Why are people still so enthusiastic about becoming a real estate investor or landlord?

Conceptually, the main reason you are struggling to find money is because you are not ready to handle money – and money knows this.You are enthusiastic and I would bet that you will succeed eventually.

I have a property in Rohnert park right next to the Graton Casino I bought in mid 90s for 27k  4 acres tax's 200 a year just sits there.. just put it on the market for 3 million will take two though  :)  its all perspective.. and where you live I made more on my bay area properties in appreciation than I could have possibly hoped to make in a life time leveraging small dollar rentals or drip income at 200 a month per door.. but to be fair I am not an investor I am a business owner and we create income with commission s Points  interest delta building new homes etc etc.. average investor cant do that .. they don't have the skill sets or experience to get the financing to pull this stuff off.So I totally get the buy a rental house try to scale it for the average W 2 or high income earner who is focused on their career.  

I am enthusiastic to learn more about Real Estate Investing and any help is highly appreciated.

Hello Biggerpockets Community,I am Kevin Dees and I wish to learn more about real estate and network will fellow enthusiasts to find strategy and gain knowledge of tge many ways to gain wealth through real estate investing.

The market has become too much of a casino for my liking.