Yes, heartily agree that this poster should stick to real estate, because, for starters, the US stock market has more than tripled since July 1998, inclusive of dividend reinvestment. My own back of the envelope calculation is that we bought our own stock and bond index shares for about half price, dramatically juicing our returns. How? We've simply been working, saving and investing since 1993 in low cost index shares bought pre-tax + an employer match in our 403bs. Over all those years we have enjoyed a taxpayer-subsidized, employer-subsidized use of a much safer type of OPM than debt leverage, all on autopilot and while sleeping soundly. DW and I have simply done our weekday (nonprofit) jobs, only spent the odd weekend beautifying our own residences, and parked as much as allowed in our 403bs. Today we have a self-replicating through dividends army of stock and bond index shares that work harder for us than we can. I haven't spent time researching a stock in 20 years, yet all of the research indicates that our low cost index returns have crushed virtually all professional money managers' returns on Wall Street over that time, including hedge funds (see Warren Buffet's 10 year wager with a hedge fund manager that the S&P 500 index would do better. Hint, Buffet is way, way ahead). Our current 12 month investment returns are up more than our combined salaries. I love to lay in my hammock on the weekends and think of the millions of people working hard for little ol' DW and me around the world, sweating it out 24/7 in many thousands of corporations - all to grow the value of our index shares and pay me to sit there relaxing, drinking my paid off ice tea in my paid off glass. As some here demonstrate, money can certainly be made in real estate as a second or third job, and it can be made through day trading penny stocks, gambling on the FOREX and shorting derivative beaver cheese futures sitting in one's underwear but our experience is that a common career and a simple index fund, bought cheaply in the black and then ignored completely, can also be a very powerful financial tool that gives a whale of a lot more than it asks for in valuable time and attention. YMMV but don't be hatin' on my index funds, y'all. They are making us rich.