Month: April 2026

2025 Rental Properties & Net

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As we finished our taxes, I thought it would be fun to see the net of each property. The numbers are all over the place.

These numbers are the result of income less costs. This is not actual cash flow. It includes depreciation of assets, depreciation of the house, and all the actual costs that are occurring throughout the year. Costs include: property management, legal fees (e.g., LLC filing), mileage, maintenance, repairs, utilities, taxes, and insurance. For those properties that have a mortgage, the annual interest on the mortgage is also included.

The third line with a loss is because the tenant has been there since we purchased the house. Our taxes and insurance have risen drastically, but I haven’t had the heart to increase their rent drastically. The 2nd line above them is basically carrying them, as it’s the same floor plan and more accurately reflects our costs. It helps that these are newer houses, so their costs for maintenance and repairs are much lower than our others.

We had 3 houses to turnover for the year, so that equates to more spending than typical on a house. Two of our houses have HOAs, so that increases our cost more on those two. Most of our expenses (outside of appliance replacement) are related to HVAC repairs and tree/gutter clean up.

The last house is such a large loss because we had to put work into the house to get it ready for renting. We purchased it in October, but we only took in one month worth of rent, so the offset wasn’t great timing.

It’s also helpful to know that while this is our 2025 net on the houses, the positive may be carrying a larger cost and lower net from previous years, or it’s adding to the potential costs in the future.

April Financial Update

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March is always a crazy month. Busy is an understatement. Baseball starts, which means we’re at the field 2-4 times a week. Our extended family has a lot of birthdays, which includes the 3 of our immediate family. We had a freak snow storm on St. Patrick’s day. The city went into gridlock. Everything was ice and cars were sliding down any hill anywhere in the city. The kids were off from school, and our dog hit a wall in health unexpectedly, and we said our goodbyes that day. It’s been quite the month.

This was a milestone birthday for me, and Mr. ODA threw a big party. That’s outside my comfort zone, but it was amazing. For that reason, I’m not going through March expenses because I really don’t want to know what he spent on me. It felt like we were spending left and right all month long, but our credit card payments have tracked as usual.

On top of all the usual things, the kids had a skating session in gym for 6 weeks. Volunteers come in for assistance, especially with the younger grades who need help even standing up. Last year, I did one session. This year, I couldn’t make it to the first one, but both kids expected me at all the other sessions, and so I did. I think it’s so cool that they get to do that at school. We also had an event for 1st graders one night, career day, and my volunteering to manage the lost and found.

We went on a spring break trip to Kansas City. I have a separate post about that coming later, but it was a pretty low cost trip, and we just explored the city.

RENTALS

A tenant moved out on April 1. She had been hemming and hawing for years about moving out because her child’s father was going to get a place with them, but things kept falling through. She finally gave a final notice, but then back tracked saying instead of January 31, she would stay through March. She did a great job moving out. I expected things left behind, or a mess of some sort, but it was great. The carpet is well past its useful life, so we’re replacing that. The walls are gross, so we’re painting everything. Actually, it turns out that painting a one story ranch is significantly easier and less overwhelming than any other house we’ve painted. Mr. ODA is worried about timing, but I’m feeling good about it. We lost a week to spring break, but from carpet measurement to install is projected to be less than a week, so that’s great. We also have an applicant in the wings that we’re working through right now, so hopefully we’ll be down for one month.

We finished our taxes, which included verifying expenses last year. We were able to claim some costs in full instead of depreciate them this year, so that was a nice way to recoup that improvement. I’ve been working on rent increases, and there’s a big batch of renewals that need notification before the end of this month.

NET WORTH

I’m still struggling getting a few accounts updated since I changed my phone number in November. So this is not a completely accurate representation of our funds, but it’s pretty close. I can’t get into my retirement account, which is a significant chunk of money, so that estimate could be off by a bit.

Our credit cards are a bit higher because we paid for carpet replacement in the rental. We also had to pay homeowners insurance on a few properties, and I always pay with credit card when I can so we get 2% back.

We also paid a chunk towards our new van loan. We had financed it to get $1000 off the purchase price. I have an earlier post that dug through those numbers to see why it was worth the few months of interest to get that price reduction.

Overall, our net worth went up from last month, so that’s a win.

2025 Extra Income

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It’s been a while since I’ve talked about the credit cards we have and how we manage using them. I seem to be caught in multiple conversations around me lately about how people feel credit cards are bad, so they use debit cards. I understand that some people have a bad history where they weren’t disciplined enough, but don’t you think after several years, you’re older and wiser and could likely teach yourself discipline? My last post was about how you could make $500 in a year just by putting an expense on a credit card and paying it off each month if you have 2% cash back. So let’s dive in to what we made in 2025. There is one caveat: we have a lot of credit cards and we put a lot of effort into using the categories; I fully understand this is more effort than nearly anyone else is willing to put in. But hopefully you can take just one thing away from this teaching and information.

You need to find your why. Your why is your driving factor on everything. Put things in perspective of “if I hadn’t spent $10 on that coffee, what could that have gone towards to provide me with longer term satisfaction?” I admit that I’ll go to Starbucks for a drink, but I buy about 5 of those $6 drinks (I get a very basic thing) in a year.

INTEREST EARNED: $1,191.42

The easiest way to make your money work for you is through interest on a bank balance. Currently, savings rates are hovering around 3.25%. I’ll just jump right into it: compound interest. Even if you have $500 extra, put this money in a savings account. At this interest rate, you’re earning $16 in a year, but that’s $16 more than you had at the beginning of the year. The mentality that $16 isn’t “worth it” is the type of thought process you need to move away from. If that balance was $5000 instead of $500, then that’s $162 in passive income.

TREASURY DIRECT: $2,098.14

This is more advanced interest income. You can create an account here and invest your money in short term securities (think CD type things at a bank). The rate is currently about 6.25%. You’re tying your money up for a period of time (4 weeks through 30 years), and the rate is tied to the term of investment, but we are actively managing our investments in 4-8 weeks segments, earning about $50 at a time.

CREDIT CARD REWARDS: $1,947.75

We have several credit cards. Some are a flat percentage for all purchases, and some have categories that earn an additional percentage back. The amount that I have here is only related to what we cashed out. More was earned, but we keep some in our Chase account balance so that we can get a bonus if we book travel through their portal.

If you don’t want to manage categories, go for the Citi Double Cash card. It gives you 1% on a purchase and 1% on a payment. The key here is that you can’t claim a statement credit because that doesn’t count as a payment, meaning you don’t get your 1% on that amount.

Without giving too much away on the cards we have, here’s a snapshot that I keep in my phone to remind myself what card to use for each purchase. The 5% category there changes quarterly. Usually, if I can’t use my Citi card, then I’m checking this graphic to see what the next best percent back for “everyday purchases” would be.

SUMMARY

This is “passive” income we’ve made. We had other avenues that brought in other income, but this is where we basically just spent money or kept money in certain accounts and brought in an extra $5,237.31. That’s a big number, and I’m sure that type of money can make a difference in your life or pay for a trip you want to go on.

Making your Money Work for You

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I snapped a screenshot of a back and forth with THE Dave. I don’t know if it was accurate, but it sparked the same frustration in the poster as it would me. In summary, the caller says that if they put $2,000 worth of expenses on a credit card and pay it off before interest hits, getting 2% cash back, that’s an extra $40 per month. Do you see where this is going yet? Dave says no credit card. The $40 per month isn’t worth the credit card, and that’s not how you get rich.

I guess the first question is: Is everyone’s intent to be rich? Or is the average person’s desire to live comfortably and enjoy their life without worrying about their spending and making ends meet?

Every year I summarize the extra income we made in the year. I admit that we’re far above average in the management we do to get that, but the concept is there – we made more than $0 in extra income, and it’s nice to have money coming in that took barely any work.

I also take the time to admit that some people can’t manage their credit card spending and need the immediate acknowledgement in their account balance that money is leaving. However, even if you made credit card mistakes at 18, have you learned that lesson 10, 20, 30 years later? Do you think you’re in a different phase of life with more control and brain capacity to manage that spending?

$40 per month is $480 per year. If you took that extra income and put it in a separate bank account, what could you do for yourself for about $500? Does that sound enticing to put towards a trip, or to use that month allowance to go to a restaurant?

The flippant response that having no debt and not using a credit card, even if it’s paid off monthly, is doing a disservice to actually teaching people money management. Make your money work for you through rewards and interest, with very little effort, and you have that extra money to do things, even if that thing is just to pay a utility bill more easily.

My next post will detail the extra income we made in 2025 and how we manage our money to work for us.