Even though I'm not watching TV I'm aware of it and feat currency slowly but steady is getting close to a collapse. 3 shortening the dollar idea was great, here it comes in mind the kyosaki ideas about money and assets so getting debt for assets makes complete sense if this assets cash flow and appreciate,  investors who over bid had in-house construction and great financing arrangements that make sense to over bid and narrow the profit margin. 

Being out of state bring a whole another level of complexity, my advice would be to find a house in a B area in Detroit or in the suburbs, ideally with only cosmetics repairs needed (you don't want to open the walls on a house built in the 30's), find a good property manager, put a good debt in place and repeat the process. 

Once you raise the value of the building then you can refinance, pull money out and put long term debt on the property.

I have a Bachelors degree in a somewhat unrelated field, and have quite a bit of school debt that I am just now receiving the bills for.

I'm a grad student with a full ride scholarship, $10,000/year stipend, no debt, a nice chunk in the bank from crypto (but not enough to buy anything outright -- not like I'd do that anyway), and a wife that makes <$30,000 per year at the moment.

So if you wanted to sell the investment after time and use this as your primary & house hacking until ‘dream home’ days, you could sell and pay off the original loan balance and go this route or pay off original loan amount without selling and keeping it and apply for the one time benefit restoration - which is not the same as entitlement re- installment for active/permanent change of station orders or foreclosed upon properties. 

The only other debt I have is my car note. 

What if someone has a high credit score, no debt, lots of savings yet their W-2 income is pretty low?

Just an Idea,  it might be worth checking habitat for humanity Restore.

They may not take very good care of us medically sometimes but they certainly make it easy for us to be in debt!