“Feeding” a rental property vs retirement account

[Ben Nelson]

Why are people generally not ok with “feeding” a rental property with negative cash flow, when they basically do this every day with standard retirement accounts? What’s the difference between putting extra cash into a hard asset like real estate vs taking cash out of your pocket to invest in stocks, etc.?

I’m not necessarily saying I’m a proponent of buying cash flow negative property or using this logic to justify it, it’s just curious to me why it’s so readily accepted to take money out of a paycheck for say a 401k, but not so much to put that money into a negative cash flow piece of property. Would love people’s thoughts on the mindset here. :)

[Ashish Acharya]

Originally posted by @Ben Nelson:

Why are people generally not ok with “feeding” a rental property with negative cash flow, when they basically do this every day with standard retirement accounts? What’s the difference between putting extra cash into a hard asset like real estate vs taking cash out of your pocket to invest in stocks, etc.?

I dont understand your logic. 

Feeding actual -ve cash flowing property is not related to contribution to a retirement plan. 

1) rental property. let's say you bought a property, and it needs 200 every month just to break even. That 200 is gone. There is no return on that. 

2) retirement acct- Save 200 is saved plus you earn market return.