Hello Jonathan, I totally understand the position that you are in at the moment.

But it's TOTALLY Doable!

I have a totally different take on it (and was in a similar situation just a few months ago).The $429K is not all your money, so the argument others make that you could take that money elsewhere is false. 

I had about $2k in closing costs total, and as a rental , side aside a reserve of $5k. 

It's totally changed my son's reading experience too -- text-to-digital-voice just doesn't communicate meaning the same way that an actual human narrator does. 

If it's been longer than 7 years, you might just leave 'em.I recommend Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover to get your financial house in order. 

We use MINT.com, which is nice.According to MINT, what is largely dragging our credit score down (it's a 758) is credit utilization.That's a few credit cards here and there but predominantly our HELOC is 60% utilized and bringing up our total credit utilization up over 40%.I'm under the understanding that many people use HELOCs as a great way to pull out equity from their primary residence.I don't understand why one would be penalized from having a stronger equity position in their primary residence?

The cooling part of the HVAC system totally died about a year ago (HVAC can still heat house). 

Only fools will buy a total disaster fixer spend the next 1 year on it.

Finding contractors and property managers are through referral and I don't just rely on one GC.