Well after getting a raise at my current job, I decided against buying a nice car and want to get into my first investment property.

Im looking for a mentor, and I have no problem washing ur cars, buying you Panera, and babysitting the kids lol :).

the 2nd association it resonates is the highly consumption-driven society we live in. in my area (coastal, urban southern california) i'm surrounded by 2 distinct lifestyles. there's the majority: seems like 95% of the local population who are renters, driving luxury cars, sporting fancy clothes, jewelry, hairdos, etc but obviously living paycheck to paycheck as exemplified by hardly a day somebody or the other is spotted  getting their car repo'ed by a camera crew. the rarer are the landlords, who in this area seem to be of mostly asian demographics (chinese, koreans, japanese) who live obviously very frugally: old 80s model sedan, oldfashion business cloths, always eating simple meal from home, seemingly never splurging $$$ other than into expanding their portfolio), my observance is relatively very few landlords in the area own relatively huge portfolios, each.with the advent of these infomercials and the internet (ie, BP) more and more people want to get a 'piece of the REI pie' and more power to them. there does seem to be this dream of rags to riches and while its ok to dream, do most people actually expect their life to turn around like that, as portrayed in most of the infomercials or even in the everyday setting where the masses living paycheck to paycheck, are spending their last expendable dollars not on depositing into savings acount, but blowing $20 on scratchies etc. in summary, is my observation reminds me of my days when i worked on wall st and the 'ra trace' was so obvious with dime a dozen stock brokers makin 6fig salaries at some point but blowing it on recreational drugs apparently costing thousands of dollars a pop to the point the next week they are broke again and that $ wasnt invested but wasted.  

The house is a 3/2 (1350 sq ft all above ground) with a 2-car garage.  

Last time I rode the NYC subway, in 2009, a homeless entered the crowded car during evening rush hour sat down on a bucket sit and began taking a crap.

We just bought two boilers and have to put in new kitchens and bathrooms and dry walls and floor covering and do work on our 2 car garage.   

Could be laughable as our clothes, cars and sidewalks may all be capturing solar energy at some point.

Make cars.

There are very few promotion opportunities within my company and judging by the cars in the car park, the money isn't there either. 

Avoid car payments like the plague.