Who uses investment equity for personal use?

[Daniel DeMarco]

I started out with buy and hold to off set my wife's income when we started to have children and it has work out great so far. It has been 6 full years and we now have over 40 units with a few single family's, duplex, quad plex, and a 16 unit building.  Rather than reinvest our equity into additional properties we have decided to use the equity to buy a large piece of property and build our dream home.  All of this is coming from the equity that has come from improving our properties.  I guess what I am trying to determine are there others that invest that  aren't searching to always reinvest into more properties but rather use the rentals to help live debt free on the personal side while improving their live style?

I just want to see if there are others out there essentially financing all of their non day to day expenses through either monthly cashflow or pulling out the equity?