This is also my desire~~ but I am less ambitious, I only want to retire right before the age of 50.

My strategy is a simple lifestyle and a booglehead style of investing (in low-cost index ETFs) and hopefully some great property deals.

Kena burnt by a few local mutual funds and local stock trading already. Now, I only buy really solid stockpicks, but gosh, they move so slow. Still learning

Planning to have kids next year, not sure how much that will impact my finances.

In my experience, there is a certain risk element (or some call it luck) to direct property investing. E.g, getting good reliable tenants, someone to buy the property off your hands at a higher price, things breaking down and needing repairs, good agents to sell/rent your property, market timings (imagine you have to sell the property for personal reasons, but the market is at the end of its boom cycle)

My relative has had sh*tty luck when it comes to tenants. He had to evict 2 tenants in the span of 12 months - which is time consuming and costly.

But this is also why the returns are on average much better than investing in property through REITS. Risk - reward tradeoff.