My Discover Bank account pays almost 2% which isn't life changing, but there is no minimum balance and it is FDIC insured.

Classifying as a distribution both defers current year taxes and pushes the profit from sale (which from a tax perspective will look at that write down of capital balance) as a long term capital gain.  

knowing your numbers means reporting and running p&l, tracking net worth, and a balance sheet. manual paper trail only gets worse as you scale so efficiency becomes important. whether you pay for someone to do that depends on if you know your numbers cold. you can't possibly know if someone else is doing it right if you don't master it first. only then can you delegate and focus your time on the higher income producing activity.

I will try to strike a better balance when approaching real estate transactions. 

And sure, you may say the appreciation could be tremendous, and perhaps it will be, perhaps we're at the top, but even if it is, you have to balance losing that much money a year until rents increase significantly, and you'll only make the money on the appreciation by selling or refinancing... 

Any payments on the balance remaining from the original loan must be included in the debt-to-income ratio calculation for the refinance transaction.

However, I have complete control over my charged fees in most of my business and I can charge the cost on the front (fees) or the back (rate) so it is a balancing act to find the right fit to the customer and business.   

Debt InformationWhat is the principal balance of the loan?

It seems like what makes a “good insurance company “ is a balance of how low the premiums are and how fairly they process claims.  

Now I mean great performing first trust deeds/mortgages not Non perfomring seconds and non performing notes.. those are more work than landlording many times. just some options to stay in the game.. most of our note clients over the years start selling off rentals as they tire of being a landlord and re balance their portfolio.you can do this in an area also were @Jim K. and @Dennis M.