Using RE to fund retirement, what successes or non successes have you had?

[Daniel Murphy]

I've been a financial planner for 18+ years and have learned the value of learning from the stories of others. 
I've also found that while RE portfolios are definitely a great way to fund retirement, sometimes the complexities can be difficult to manage for retirees.
I'm looking to hear any success stories or "things I wish I had known" type of info from those who have used real estate investments to fund retirement.  

Thanks in advance!

[Bill B.]

I wish I had known about real estate before looking up more than 10 years of contributions to stocks in retirement accounts. (There was no BP, I didn’t have any relatives that owned investment properties or even a second home, heck I didn’t know anyone that didn’t just have a job and a prayer for retirement.) Once I switched to real estate and treated it as a retirement plan instead of a current income plan. I bought a dozen homes and worked on paying them off asap.  Just as people expect their retirement accounts to be VERY cashflow negative every month. I simply put all incoming rental “profit” towards loans. I eventually sold a couple to put towards debt and within 10 years I had 10 paid off properties producing a little over $20k/mo net.  

I think if you treat your real estate investments as investments you can create a pretty amazing retirement in 10-20 years.  People keep calling it real estate investing and yet want to live off it right away, before retirement. Does anyone talk that way about stock investing?  if you want to live off it before retirement you want a real estate business. That’s fine too, but it’s not the same. 

I literally work 30-60 minutes a month, will never touch the money I wasted with retirement contributions, and love the freedom and massive tax advantages of real estate. I can’t imagine someone with kids working 40hrs a week until they’re 45-50+ and missing their kids growing up. Or worse yet being laid off one morning because they are no longer needed and get to compete with 25-30 year olds for a new job.