Month: September 2026

September Financial Update

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I really thought I’d be more on top of managing our expenses and categorizing them this year, but it just didn’t pan out. Our spending is higher than I would like in the food category, but I just can’t seem to carve out time to manage that. I did put effort into a Kroger run. We shop Kroger and Meijer (main grocery store chains in this area) for their sales, and we usually use this to stock up on pantry type items. Usually Mr. ODA handles the details because he can recall the average prices and the trends of sales, but we were running low on cereal options, so I checked the Kroger ad and made a list while I could sit and compare prices at Walmart. I learned a lesson on how some things are only deals on the weekend, and then another lesson that if you’re shopping the weekly ad sales, don’t expect everything to be in stock at the end of the sale period. But it’s fun to watch your total go from $135 to $77 when you press check out on the self check out screen!

We’re still carrying $13k on a 0% interest credit card until closer to the end of the year. This was a couple of rental issues and our house’s new windows. Whenever we have a big purchase coming up, we open a new credit card to give ourselves a “free” personal loan. It works out to be about every 18 months we have something to put on a credit card. We started this with IVF for our oldest. A few years ago, it was new carpet for the house. This time it was new windows for the house. We have the cash to pay for it, but we also believe in leverage. We also don’t go for any 0% promotional offers when purchasing from another company (e.g., furniture, windows). When we open a credit card, we get some sort of other offer (e.g., cash back), so if we’re going to take a credit hit, we may as well get $200-500 back on it.

We’re about to go down our first braces road. It’s not fully braces, but a gentle expander to help open his airway. It should help get his jaw more in alignment by helping him breathe through his nose at night. As a byproduct, it should help with some crowding he’s experiencing, although the orthodontist wasn’t concerned with his level of crowding at his age. It was an eye opening experience. The mouth told these two guys a ton of information about my kid’s lifestyle and needs.

I’ve backed off a lot of hours with my job. I’m working from home and managing a few things in the background. My motivation has been lacking, but our youngest started school, so I have more time to get things done. The beginning of school has a lot of activities, so I’ve been focused on that mostly as I’m on the PTA board. Two HOAs are active right now, and one HOA barely does anything so I just check those emails and move on. One HOA has a revamp of the deeds and restrictions, and another one has a major insurance hurdle we’re working through.

We allowed one of ours to do two sports this fall. I’m quite against the concept because you need to be committed to a team for the sake of the team, so I don’t like when kids chose between two options and then one team is left with a hole. But the baseball season usually doesn’t touch weekends, likely for the fact that most kids are doing soccer and flag football on the weekends. This year, they had to include a couple of weekends because of field maintenance in October, so we’ve been run ragged around here. The end is in sight next week though. We’ve been doing baseball multiple nights, one night of soccer practice, two nights of gymnastics, and then soccer and baseball games on Saturdays. We’ve even had a Sunday make up for baseball. We haven’t been double booked all that much. We were going to miss soccer practice for a baseball game, but then the league cancelled practice due to heat. Our daughter is going to leave gymnastics tonight a bit early so that we can be at most of the baseball game.

RENTAL PROPERTIES

I’ve been pretty down on the rentals lately. They’ve required a lot more attention, and it’s not easy attention. If it was just calling out a trades person to handle an issue, that’s fine. Instead, I’m managing people and their emotions. That’s not my role. I don’t need to know your life sob story. I don’t need to know all the details about what is happening in your marriage/divorce. Your job is to pay me rent on time, and if it can’t be on time, communicate that. My job is to collect the rent and keep things in working order.

As of the 8th, we had $2300 remaining on rent collection (granted $750 of that is expected because that house is on a twice-per-month lease agreement). One house told me well in advance that they were going to be late because of a new job and the delay with the first pay check. One house strung me along up until the very last minute that part of rent would be late. And another house said that she’d have no problem paying rent even though she broke a toe, and then proceeded to only pay part of rent with zero communication on what’s happening. She eventually said she would pay the rest by the 16th. Managing 14 rentals isn’t easy, but I still recommend having multiple because when people don’t pay their rent, you have enough coming in to cover expenses on the houses.

My previous post outlined the details of a turnover that I was working on. That involved calling out HVAC to fix a frozen line. Outside of managing that and late rent payments, my other time was devoted to a house that we’re going to sell.

Yup. That’s where I’m at. It’s a small 800sf house with 2 bedrooms and the bathroom is only accessible between the two bedrooms. It’s not in a great neighborhood (actually, the area itself is a great location and there’s been a lot of turnover/renovation, but literally across the street from our house is an apartment complex that pulls some pretty bad things). I also have A LOT to say about the tenants that left this house and what we’ll have to do to turn it over, but for now, our energy is going into turning this place into a listing. We’re currently deciding between a 1031 exchange and just keeping the money to put towards a pool. As I’ve said: I’m over the rentals at the moment. So I’m leaning towards eating the capital gains and getting a pool put in. The biggest deciding factor right now is that I’m tired of having to put the stress into finding a fall/winter tenant, so I’m not all that interested in purchasing a house in October/November/December. Perhaps if we list it in a month or so, and it sits for months into the spring market, I may change by mind.

NET WORTH

Well, it went down. But I was surprised it was up last month. We haven’t made any move, and we’ve lost about $4,000 of projected income with a vacant house while we get it ready to list. The house is paid off, so all we need to manage at this point is the electricity. Our credit cards are a decent chunk lower; our spending has been low this month.

House1: Turnover

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My last post was about the tenant who vacated the house. She was one of the more difficult ones that we had to deal with. Her rent payments kept getting later and later, to the point that she was over a month behind on payment and wasn’t making partial payments. She finally vacated on August 1st.

Honestly, this is not going to be a polished, pretty, professional story. This post is a complaint about people and their inability to be grown ups and take responsibility for themselves, and that’s just this house is going.

TURNOVER WORK

The tenant did a great job cleaning the place and had the carpet professionally cleaned, so that was a big deal in getting through the turnover. Most of the house is carpet that is less than a year old, but we had laid LVP without leveling the floor for the living room area, and that has not worked well. Our lesson learned is that it’s definitely needed to lay leveling if you want your floor to stay in place. We also picked a fairly cheap option, and it seems the ‘locking’ mechanism isn’t the best. On the flip side, it’s extremely satisfying to bang the boards back together and watch the seem disappear. So we had to do that in several areas for that flooring.

Then there were random odds and ends. There was a toilet seat stained purple, a stove burner broken in half (the things that happen amaze me), and two cabinets had food left in them. I mopped down the floors and did minor paint touch ups. The fridge wasn’t working when I got in there. I moved it out from the wall to make sure it was plugged in and then shook it a bit, and it turned back on; that’s probably going to be an issue later. Overall it was a pretty easy turn over.

RENT OR SELL

Honestly, this house seems to attract a less-than-stellar group of interested tenants. I’m not sure why because the location is actually great, and if you rely on the bus, there’s a bus route to all major areas right behind the house. It’s a townhouse, so walking in to a flight of stairs is daunting, but you get a garage and private driveway as part of the gig. I’m just surprised at how hard it has been to find a new tenant here. I was ready to sell.

The issue is that if we sell, then we need to pay capital gains taxes on the profit, unless we 1031 exchange it. But to 1031 exchange it means buying another rental property, and I’m pretty burnt out on managing tenants at the moment, so that wasn’t too enticing either. I decided to see how a few showings turned out and go from there, but we had already broached the topic with our realtor to figure out list price.

TENANT EVALUATIONS

Shortly after having this struggle, I showed the house to about 10 groups in the matter of a few days. No one met the criteria we have laid out, but that’s not surprising. There were two candidates who stuck out. They were equal in how they didn’t qualify, but one was looking to move mid-August and another was looking for mid-September. I went with the mother/daughter/granddaughter group looking to move mid-August.

They had an ESA dog. I don’t mind an ESA dog when it’s actually necessary, but she didn’t have paperwork and it didn’t seem legitimate, but I have no more fight in me. The difference to me is $250. Their credit was barely above 500, and there were a few other red flags about verification of who they are. Again, it’ll probably come back to bite me, but I’m too tired to care at this point. It’s been a long road of managing difficult people.

MOVE IN

They had originally said about August 13, but when it came to signing the lease, they decided on August 19. At the lease signing, they were to bring the security deposit, $1350. They showed up with $1300 in cash and then struggled to set up an electronic payment method to get me the $50. They also expected me to allow them to pay in cash every month for rent, and I was direct in that cash is not sustainable because that makes me have to figure out getting to you to pick up cash. We got the lease signed and agreed to meet on the 19th at 9:30 am.

A couple of days before move in, the daughter of the crew texted me that she has another dog and is worried about coming up with the money for having an animal on the lease. I let her know that I wouldn’t charge her and it’s fine. I was hoping to garner some good will. Again, that $250 means more to them than to me at this point.

On the 19th, at about 9:20 am, the oldest tenant of the crew texted me that they were running late. I said I was already there and whenever they could make it would be fine. Then she texted me that she only had part of the rent. That her daughter’s pay check doesn’t clear until 1 pm. Now, they work with the City in some fashion, and the City had agreed to pay $500 towards their rent for the first month. So I had agreed that they just needed to pay $850 to get the keys because I had verified the program with the City already. So they were asking me to turn over the unit to them with $425 in hand. I declined. I asked her to let me know when they’re ready to pay the full $850 and I’d meet them. Unfortunately, getting a time decided was not going well. I just don’t understand why people think I’m sitting around waiting to show up at this house for them. I finally had to say I needed to meet before 2, otherwise it wasn’t going to happen until like 8 pm.

The daughter of the group was complaining about setting up an electronic payment method. Lady, you’re 22 and it’s 2026; I find it hard to believe you can’t figure this out on your own. She texted me constant updates. We also had an issue with the water getting in their name. They just kept texting me all day about what they were doing, and it was too much. I just need the payment. I don’t service the water company. I don’t service Venmo. I don’t service PayPal. I just need the payment in my “hands.”

Well, they made 2:00 happen and even was able to pick up the check from the City, so I started with the full $1350.

They had made a big deal about there being no blinds in the bedrooms. We’ve learned along the way that the more things we provide, the more it becomes our problem when the tenant breaks them. So over the years, we’ve removed broken blinds and not put them back up (you want landlords to provide things like window coverings, treat them nicely). We decided to provide the 3 missing blinds in the bedrooms. Well, when she moved in, she complained that they weren’t on the back doors, but I still didn’t add those.

Since they’ve moved in, we had an issue with the HVAC not working. The coils were frozen. It’s been a whole debacle. The one tenant texted me rudely that it being 80 in the house was unacceptable because she has a 3 year old. After all the issues with setting up their accounts, getting payment, making things harder than they needed to be, I was done. I wrote back that there was a proper way to establish this relationship, and in all my time as a landlord over several houses, I haven’t had anyone start off this in such a way. I wasn’t making it 80 degrees in there. When I was there, the air was running and it was comfortable. I can’t know something isn’t working until you tell me it’s not working. My tech ended up getting out there on Saturday and Sunday to manage it and get it running again.

SO FAR

At this point, they still are difficult. They had issues paying their partial month balance, but they got it paid. That’s another thing – I can’t believe the number of times people say “my employer messed up my pay check.” It just doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been on the payer side and it’s not something that gets messed up. It’s pretty automated, especially when these people are likely using a punch clock system to make it even more automated.

I’ll just wrap this up here. Hopefully we continue to receive rent and it doesn’t become a bigger issue as we get into the winter months.

House1: Turnover – Original Tenant

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I don’t usually spend much time on the tenant themselves, but there are a lot of lessons to share with this one.

We had to turn this house over last year when the two ladies who lived there moved to Georgia. They had been there a couple of years. We were busy when their lease ended, so when they asked for another month, I had agreed. But then we were on an awkward schedule for leasing. Our candidate pool was pretty low. We ended up settling on this lady who said she needed to find a place fast because her landlord was selling the property she was living in. She had told us that she needed to wait for him to return her security deposit to get us our security deposit. She told us this after we had already started the process of getting her into the house, so we just had to accept it. It took her 3 payments to get us the security deposit. That was the first red flag. She continued to be an issue for her entire tenure.

She was the type of person who wanted to hide behind her faith while continuing to treat us terribly. I can’t standing living through something like that.

The second red flag came when she kept saying her mail key wouldn’t work. She would take a week to respond to Mr. ODA with information on how it didn’t work. Finally, after several weeks of back and forth, Mr. ODA drove over there. He put the key in the mailbox number he told her and it worked fine. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but coupled with everything else we went through, it was telling.

LATE RENT

The third red flag was everything about rent. In February, she paid $1000 on the 5th. Since she paid the majority of rent up front, we didn’t charge her a late fee. She paid $350 on the 15th. Not bad. She paid when she said she would. Then it just keeps getting worse.

She let us know that she was going to be late for March. There wasn’t great communication, but we received half of rent on the 7th. After much follow up, she paid the second half of rent and $50 towards the late fee on the 28th. When people pay that late in the month, I know it’s going to cause the next month to be late. So April comes along and she barely tells us what’s happening. She just keeps saying she needs more time and eventually pays on the 25th with $50 of a late fee. No partial payments. Mr. ODA expresses the need for partial payments and to communicate what is going on. She acted like we were out of line for expecting rent. Then comes May. More bad communication. Mr. ODA finally expresses that the late fee is actually $135 and that’s written in the lease agreement (she’s surprised by that). We get rent and the full late fee on May 30th.

We’re in trouble now. I serve her notice that she’s to vacate the premises at the end of her lease term, June 30. Now, please note that as of the 6th of each month, we are well within our rights to serve her a notice that says she has 5 calendar days to make payment or we’ll file for eviction. We don’t do that. We keep hoping she’ll figure it out and get back on track like she tells us she’s working on.

In mid-June, we’re camping, and she calls Mr. ODA. She says she’s been praying on it, and Jesus wants her to stay in our house instead of finding somewhere else. Mr. ODA tells her that she needs to make payment to us for that to be considered. She says she’s going to look into her finances and she can probably get us some money that Friday (it was Wednesday). On Sunday, Mr. ODA texts her to ask what’s going on and she says she can’t pay anything towards rent because she “just” paid rent and her last pay check needed to go to other bills. Mr. ODA says we’ll give her until the end of July since now she’ll have less time to find a place, but she needs to get out. Again, our attempt to treat someone like a human instead of us protecting our business 100%.

She paid June rent on July 5. She told us it would be on July 3. On the 4th she hadn’t paid. Mr. ODA asked where payment was and she said “it’s coming.” She paid rent and the late fee that Sunday morning after more follow up.

She told us we’d have rent on July 31 before she moved out. On the 31st, she said she needed more time. She handed me cash on August 1st.

The person who owns the house has bills to pay. If I don’t pay my bills, the bank could take the house away. So you not paying your rent affects what I can pay. Now, I’m a good person and am always trying to be reasonable. We’ve set up our business so that we can pay our bills even if someone doesn’t have the money to pay their rent perfectly on time. But paying your rent a full month (or longer) after it’s due, with very little communication, and hardly ever following through on the payment date you gave us is taking advantage of us. There was no appreciation for us being understanding. There were hardly any apologies. We were always the bad guy for following up when payment wasn’t being made (while the payment date was actually the date she established and we never forced anything).

THE MOVE OUT

I sent multiple emails letting her know that if she was not out by July 31 at 5 pm there would be fees incurred. She would claim to understand, but then at 3:20, she told Mr. ODA she wasn’t going to make it. Mr. ODA said to move everything to the garage so we could start working on the house to get it re-rented. Well, there’s no lock on the door between the garage and the house, so that plan didn’t exactly work to get us a secured house while she finished moving out.

I will say that she kept the house in great condition. There were chew marks on molding, which says she may have had a dog that wasn’t authorized, but she had the carpets cleaned by Stanley Steamer and the house was cleaned up when she vacated. It’s always a risk when you’re telling someone to get out because they haven’t paid rent that they’re going to destroy something or leave trash behind.

She kept trying to tell Mr. ODA that she’d be done by 8, then 10, then midnight. She really expected us to meet her to get the keys at midnight. Then around 9:30, she texted Mr. ODA saying she was really just too tired to continue and would need to finish it the next day. I met her out there at 9 am. She said she couldn’t get a u-haul and needed more time, but her truck reservation was for 5:30 pm. I literally said that the goal post keeps moving so how was I to know that she’d actually be out of there that night. She tried to give me the keys to the house at that point, but I had to explain that if she gives me the keys, then it’s on me to drop everything and be available when she got the u-haul, and it wasn’t fair to me to keep having to show up to be told she wasn’t done.

Well, she ended up getting the u-haul a bit earlier and was able to text Mr. ODA that she was ready to turn over the keys. She did eventually get everything out (well, except for two cabinets in the kitchen).

But that wasn’t it. Mr. ODA decided to offer to get her the mail that was in the box. It was really because she wanted to check on the 1st one final time, but Mr. ODA didn’t head out there with the mail key. So after multiple back and forths, they finally decide to meet at a park in town. She then shows up a half hour before the agreed upon time because she was able to get out of work early. Well, that’s not how meet ups work. I just can’t comprehend the number of times that this lady thought that we just sit around waiting for her to decide to need us and that we were just going to magically appear when she rubbed her genie lamp. So Mr. ODA went out of his way to get her the mail, and she was bothered that she had to wait – even though he was 8 minutes earlier than the agreed upon time.

SECURITY DEPOSIT

In the end, it wasn’t bad. She got 80% of her security deposit back. I charged her for a broken stove burner, trash removal from the kitchen, and a stained toilet seat that needed replaced. The house was very clean, so I didn’t need to put much time into that.

SUMMARY

She lived there for less than a year, but she was one of the hardest people to manage. I try really hard to establish a relationship with my tenants that says I’ll treat them with respect and understanding if they treat me with respect. I get praised and thanked up and down from my other tenants. This one wasn’t like that. She thought our bar of understanding needed to be way too high and was completely unreasonable. We were as gracious and patient as we could be.