Not rewarding yourself from time to time can be stressful.

In the shorter term, my girlfriend and I would like to purchase a home to house-hack in 2020 and possibly finance a wedding! 

You are going to get stressed out and discouraged.

If you don't like it when the lease is up make them get out, but imo as long as your getting your money, and even more, I wouldn't stress it to much.

I cannot stress enough the importance of having a large cash buyers list before you really put yourself out there to land deals.

Stress test it, run it more conservatively, and hopefully still be confident in your return.Assuming you followed your investment rules, then go back over your investment criteria, and re-confirm to yourself that the deal meets your criteria.I find that the more I go back over my homework, know that I’ve rigorously followed my investment criteria, and keep seeing the same positive results, the more confident I become in my decision.

If you rent a tux for a wedding and some crazy person runs up and cuts the legs off of the pants, does the company say "Darn we have such bad luck, looks like we lost another one at our expense"?

Stress test all of your deals thoroughly and ensure you have the correct systems in place. 

It is very time consuming and sometimes quite stressful.

A death in a unit is tragic and stressful (for all parties).