I am retired and new to real estate investment.

Hopefully you will have sold the property a couple of months after you finish the rehab, and you will save quite a bit in closing costs by skipping the refi process, given you would likely only hold the refi mortgage for a couple months or so.

No annual requirements on audits or reviews of financials (save money from hiring CPA consultants).

I never thought about saving first before investing  :/  Ironically enough I found "Building Wealth One House At A Time" on Amazon shortly after and had no idea it was also associated with Bigger Pockets.

I just did a major rehab and was amazed at the amount of money I saved doing a lot of work myself and shopping subs.  

Finish your education, get established in a career with a couple of years of employment and use that time to live the most frugal life style possible to save up the cash needed for the necessary DP and reserves.

And, if you are in lesser priced properties (say under $70K), it's unlikely you're going to save much money by doing it yourself. 

One podcast recently i listened to mentioned that he self manages all his properties to save on the PM fees, but he has some sort of policy with the local utilities that basically gives his tenants a 24hr number to call if something was to happen to say a frig or hvac... he even mentioned it covered a clogged toilet..I am curious what exactly is this such policy he is talking about, because the way he worded it, it sounded like he took most of the headache out of the job with this and he just worries about getting new tenants and collecting rent... he said the policy was cheaper than just keeping a handyman on call to do the repairs.. 

@Isaac Molina IIII would be very careful withdrawing money from retirement accounts to invest in real estate. 

No, No, No.Highly unlikely they will move to save $200/month but if they would then they are not quality tenants.