Moving Back to the United States

[kayakclimb247]

Hello,
This is my first post to the mustachian community so please forgive me if itīs a generic question, but itīs one that I have been struggling with for sometime.
My wife and I have always been able to do a lot with the little we had.  Before we moved abroad we had a child while I was still in college and were still able to purchase our 2nd house.  Now we have been teaching abroad for two years and have a nice little nest egg.  Never having a lump of money before I am not sure how best to spend it.
So lets start with some details:
We will have 80k in cash when we move home.  I want to keep 30k set aside for the rainy days, and so my wife does not have to work full time while our kids are still young.  That leaves 50k to do something cool with.  We want to take 30 k to put down on another house for us and keep renting out our two houses.  That leaves 20k right away with nothing to do, and another 20k coming back from Germany (the retirement we paid into the German system) 2 years after our return. 
Having read this blog I am now becoming inspired to pay down my debt faster, but there is still a big part of me that likes to invest in more properties since I am able to cash flow 1,100 a month off of two rentals.
So I suppose my question is, what would you do, what creative thing am I missing.  I know itīs not a lot of money to play around with, but itīs more then I have ever had and I want to make it last.
Thanks for your thoughts, tips, or tricks.
Patrick

[daverobev]

Many proponents here of buying rentals as long as they cashflow. No reason to do otherwise, if you're happy with that, and the returns, and you know what you're getting into... of course you'd always need to have cash to fix stuff up that breaks.

Not sure why you'd keep a whole 30k for rainy days, unless as a sort of 'universal emergency fund' for the rentals AND yourself - otherwise it seems a lot of money.

[tariskat]

What if you lost your renters?  You should be able to keep mortgage payments going without them in case something goes bad.  So, putting the extra 30k towards the houses so they can be 100% paid off faster seems reasonable to me.  I'm in the 'pay down debts' boat unless you can open up some retirement accounts and max them out instead.