What does the Hippocratic oath have to do with staying in the United States or leaving?

Be sure to compare unit cost, not just overall cost. Often times, the thing you buy at Walmart for $5 is less quantity/weight than the comparable thing you buy at Costco for $4.75.

Emotional support vehicle? Don't you mean Gender Affirmation Vehicle?

Buckwheat pillow with a thick flannel cover. Belly sleeper and my pillow travels everywhere I do.

Buckwheat, in my opinion, takes a good 6 months for it to be properly broken in, but once it is I have a good couple of years of amazing sleep.

This is me.

Bought a nearly 100 year old house earlier this year, 1.5 hours away from where I live. I work full time.

I've spent nearly every weekend and ALL of my free cash (plus credit that I'll likely be paying off for a few years) to replace the sewer lines, insulate the crawlspace and basement, replace the roof, replace the siding, replace the leaking windows, update the electrical, update the plumbing, replace old appliances, replace corroded cabinet hardware, seal holes around the house from rodents, paint the walls, ceiling, and cabinetry inside the house, remove and clean up a dilapidated wood shed, empty an incredible amount of rotten and corroded junk from the basement, CLEAN the basement, replace the broken door to the basement, fill in and repair cracked and broken concrete, replace the rotten hot tub, and ongoing efforts to prevent water from flooding the basement every time it rains.

And I'm not finished. Not even close. There is so much to be done to make this place work and make sure it stays in good condition for years to come.

The initial priority was pest control, deep cleaning, painting, and furnishing. Once that was done the place was listed on AirBnB. It's helped to offset the costs, but will take decades to break even. After utilities, taxes, supplies, and expenses for cleaning between guests I'm pulling in maybe a couple hundred dollars a month. But it helps.

Are you saying you read the 3 pages of rambling nonsense about how this cookie recipe reminds you of time spent at Grandma's Lake House as a child before actually getting to a shit recipe pulled directly from Betty Crocker, only it's missing key ingredients?

/S

I think the bigger problem is endless Facebook/YouTube short videos. We've gone into Fahrenheit 451 territory.

Would you stop working if the government gave you $500 a month? I sure as hell wouldn't. At no point in my life have I ever had so much money that I thought "yeah this is enough" and stopped trying to earn more.

So... Time for everyone else to get a gun?

We are actually fixing it up for family to live in. We have overseas relatives who visit for 6 months a year. When they are not here, we might use it for ourselves as well - but more likely we will rent to traveling nurses.

I'm not interested in being a long term landlord. I've lived with enough self-entitled roommates to want to never have to be on the other side of that relationship as a landlord.

I guess it really depends on whether or not the landlord is a slumlord or not.

Home ownership is not easy. Homes and properties require constant care and maintenance, for those who care about them. Having two properties can easily eat up 2-3 days a week, year round.

Absolute bare minimum I put at least $10,000 into my house every year, and that's if I do all the work myself and nothing major breaks.

Paint, decking, siding, roof, furnace, plumbing, electrical, lighting, exhaust fans, yardwork, insulation, windows, doors, cabinetry, appliances, replacing sewer lines, cleaning french drains, gutters, etc etc. They may not all need work in the same year, but they do all need work and some of those jobs are a major time and money commitment.

To say property ownership is a passive income is ignorant at best, but more likely disingenuous. If it's truly passive, it's only passive for a short period of time before the costs catch up to you and your "investment" is ruined.

So instead of buying a home that needed a lot of work and spending a lot of money locally in order to accomplish that work and making minimal (if any) profit, I should just give my money to an investment firm who will be both shittier AND more expensive to renters, while siphoning money away from that local market?

Please explain how me investing in a REIT rather than actual real estate solves your problem.