After that I will focus on expanding my reach and find a small apartment complex 8-24 units, although I know this will be capital intensive I plan to keep my savings rate around 60 or 70% of net income to make this happen. 

We currently have about 10k saved up and substantial amount of student loans (thanks to me) to pay off.

I just saved you 15 grand . ..Now that you got that out of the way ,you can stay on this site and learn the other 99% of real estate investing for free

I have saved $15,000 so far, and I plan to continue saving.

Appraisers can get things wrong, just have to document how and it should be resolved. 

Everyone we have networked with says we must have skin in the game to do any kind of joint ventures/learn from them or even join a team, which we would love to do, however we basically gave our life savings to a family member to deal with a health battle.

To save money?

I’m go ahead and start saving up that 20% and see what doors open up for me.

I’ve got excellent credit but am short on cash with just $30,000 in savings.

It'll cost you, but the time and effort saved is usually worth it.