We are 2 months without Mr. ODA’s pay check. I honestly haven’t noticed because my day to day is just managing how much is coming in against how much is going out. My concern is the net I have for this year is $30k less than what Mr. ODA brought in. We’re adding nearly $2k…

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Another month, and another delayed post while I juggle life. These numbers are mostly based on last Wednesday’s market close. I had big intentions of writing this on Thursday last week. RENTALS Our rental that we purchased a month ago is still vacant. It’s a commercial loan, so the first payment was just made on…

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We last purchased a rental property in 2022, after most of our purchasing was done in the the 2019 era. We were busy with 3 kids, and I recently felt like I was coming out of the fog. Mr. ODA and I went to a wealth building seminar in the Spring; my intention was to…

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We had two tenants move out at the end of July. We also had back to back trips scheduled for the end of July and beginning of August, with the kids starting school on the 13th. We also had the cruise planned for the end of September into October, so that was a decent push…

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After each trip, I typically summarize how much it cost us. I like talking about money, mostly to work towards eliminating the stigma about talking about money. The more information you have, the better informed you are when it comes to decisions, so here’s a reference point to file away. We sailed Royal Caribbean’s Oasis…

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Let’s start with a win – we hit $5 million net worth! It has been a month. Goodness. Two rentals to turn over and just … life. That’s where I left this post on September 17. It’s currently October 6, so I’m going to just call it good and post. We had two rentals to…

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This month was unbelievably painful financially. And yet, I appreciate that we’ve set ourselves up that we can handle these things without stress, even though the balances on credit cards made me feel like I was drowning. At one point, we had over $30k on credit cards. I’m still juggling life as a mom, financial…

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Well, we started the month with way too many things hitting the credit card: 2 insurance policy renewals, a new insurance policy, air conditioning fix at a rental, and bathroom replacement at a rental. That eventually led to a $1500 charge for bat removal at another rental. PERSONAL My big news this month was handling…

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I had an “ah-ha” moment the other day about this word. There’s a difference between being able to afford something and wanting to afford it. So many times, we focus heavily on what people see on the outside. I hear it at work lately – I work with agents, and there are comments made about…

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School’s out, and my organization of time isn’t what it used to be. I did put together a summer calendar, made a list of activities available for each day, and made their wish list, so my type-a was showing then. The only problem is that the oldest can read and the second can mostly read,…

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I like to do recaps of trips we take, highlighting our spending decisions. For spring break, we had planned on doing a big trip out west. Ultimately, we decided the kids were still too little to push such an itinerary. Along that timeframe, I also started a new job, where taking a week off just…

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*I’ve been working on this post for a week, so my numbers are a week old, but I don’t want to re-update them. I’m also posting on a Tuesday just to get this ‘out the door.’* I’m starting to pull myself out of the overwhelmed hole I felt I was in. There’s still a lot…

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On April 6, we submitted our taxes. Honestly, I think that’s the earliest we’ve ever done it. We usually owe a good amount, so there’s no incentive for us to do it early. After owing a penalty last year, we pushed to be on top of the projected tax liability. It looks like we’ll owe…

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We started getting emails about end of school year activities, and boy was that a surprise that we’re at that point. The middle one is done mid-May and the big kid is done at the end of May. Less than 2 months until summer break. Mr. ODA took the second round of the government’s offer…

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There are options that give the tenant flexibility, while protecting your financial interests in a rental property. I talk about this in some fashion about once per year, but I like to give the reminder. In January, I ran all my usual numbers to determine if any properties needed a rent increase. The last few…

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Well, my desire to post every Thursday fell off there. I started a new job, Mr. ODA’s Federal job has been in limbo, and just general life things have been going on and keeping us busy. The kids started t-ball in the past few weeks, our youngest was waitlisted at both of the preschools we…

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PERSONAL I’ve been busy getting started with a new job that should officially begin in the next couple of weeks. I’ve still subbed at the preschool a few days over the last month. I’ve been working on financial consulting work for a school in Virginia. I’ve also been trying to get our homeowners association documents…

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In November 2023, I posted about rental changes that had occurred over the previous year. I wanted to update that analysis a few months ago, but I didn’t have all the KY data. I recently shared that my rent increases aren’t covering my cost increases, and my portfolio’s cash projections are lower now than when…

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It’s the new year, so that means everyone’s pushing to “start fresh” and “get organized.” Someone I follow on Instagram talks about “getting organized” at least once per month. This month, she bought a new electronic tool that her husband hung on the wall to get her organized. Here’s my unpopular opinion: organization happens in…

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When we consider purchasing a house to be used as a long term rental unit, we perform a “cash on cash” analysis. I’ve discussed this in the past, and I regularly share this with other people for their use. The gist of this calculation is to determine whether we would get a return on the…

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We’ve done a good job at enjoying time together this past month. We haven’t had a lot of expenses pop up, which was a nice reprieve. However, the market is much lower at this time this month than it was last month, so our net worth actually decreased. I keep focusing on the long term…

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Every year, I like to look back at ways we earned income outside of a W-2 or our rental properties. These things include interest earned, dividends paid, and bonuses received on credit cards. CREDIT CARDS We opened a new credit card to give ourselves a 0% interest loan when we purchased the hot tub. I’m…

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This was a good year. We took a lot of trips, made some good memories, and purchased some fun things. While day to day life has been hard with 3 little kids and managing some of my own interests, it really was a fun and rewarding year when I look at the big picture. PERSONAL:…

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We bought an electric vehicle. Honestly, I didn’t see this coming. Since our trip in July, Mr. ODA has been reading about them. He decided he wanted a Tesla for numerous reasons. We test drove one in mid-November, and we picked up our new car order by the end of that week. Tesla was offering…

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We bought a Tesla. In the process, they’re offering a 0% APR promotion. They let you see how your credit rating affects your monthly payment (through different APRs). The final column in the table below shows the increase each level adds from the previous level. This is based on a 60 month term. So, ignoring…

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I’m late to this comparison, but I didn’t have a reason to pay attention to electric vehicles (EVs) until our trip to Denver in July. As seems to be the case regularly there, the rental car company didn’t have any available inventory of gas vehicles, even though that’s what we booked. I’m actually starting to…

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We bought a hot tub! It’s something that we’ve been talking about for almost a year, went looking at in May, and then finally ordered it last month. It was delivered and set up this week. RENTALS We replaced the roof on one of the houses. I go into that a little more in the…

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Over a year ago, we opened a new credit card because we replaced the carpet in our house. This year, we finally were able to make a purchase we’ve been waiting for: a hot tub. Mr. ODA has wanted a hot tub for a while. We did some exploratory searching in May, thinking our deck…

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I feel like I have a lot of balls in the air right now, but looking at our finances, they don’t say that there have been a lot of charges. However, this post sure says that I’ve been juggling a good amount of things over this last month, and most of the issues are related…

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We’re now on school schedules with our oldest starting kindergarten. We wouldn’t have typically taken an October trip without such prompting, but we decided to take advantage of the “down time.” We also became a Central KY cliche, and went down to Gatlinburg. We aren’t the type who save up for years to go to…

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I grew up in a private school setting, and we didn’t have a cafeteria that made us food to purchase. Everyone once in a while, we’d have “pizza day,” where we could bring in a dollar or two and buy pizza that they had delivered from somewhere. My high school had a full cafeteria that…

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We have two kids in school now, and my days are chaotic to say the least. I have not figured out my organization of all the “required” activities I have. I’ve written our schedule out several times over the last few weeks. It seems so easy because nothing overlaps, but my days are full of…

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In 2021, we looked to buy a lake house. We tried so hard to find something, and we almost settled on something that didn’t fully make us happy. It was March or April of that year, and we finally stepped back and said, “instead of buying a house here that we feel pressured to come…

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I have a tenant who, in the same day, told me that she couldn’t pay rent on time and asked whether she could buy the house. She said she paid $60,000 to me and that could have gone towards owning a house. While I understand the lump sum of what you paid being a pain…

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Many of our activities over this last month were already paid for or minimal cost. We went to Colorado, and we’ve been doing back to school type activities. Mr. ODA was in Colorado longer than the rest of us (I flew home on my own with 3 kids!), and he went on a work trip…

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The President issued a statement calling on Congress to cap rent increases at 5%, specifically for corporate landlords. The statement appears to define corporate landlords as those owning over 50 units in their portfolio. This was not an executive action that is implemented. And while my numbers are different than the numbers of a “corporate…

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Back when I spent my days working in front of a computer, it was easy for me to analyze our spending. These days, with 3 kids in tow, I’m lucky to record our finances timely. There’s no time for analyzing. But over the past two years, I haven’t been happy with our spending total for…

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There has been a lot of talk about thermostat temperatures recently because of how hot it has been where I live. There are Department of Energy images circulating that say keep your home at 78 when you’re home, 82 when sleeping, and 85 when away from home. Personally, I need it colder at night than…

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We have several rental properties in Richmond, VA. However, we moved away from the area in September 2020, leaving the properties under a property manager’s oversight. My goal was to make it back to the houses annually to do walk throughs of properties. It’s surprising how many people don’t tell landlords about issues timely. Since…

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RENTAL EXPENSES We took a trip to Richmond, VA to work on rental properties. It was fairly last minute. I had a schedule of work at each house that I planned. However, I didn’t plan on the heat index being 113 and 112 for the two main days we were there. I was able to…

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Social security was signed into law by President Roosevelt in 1935. One of the intents of the program was to provide income for retired workers aged 65 or older. The purpose of the Social Security Act was to help destitute aging individuals who were not receiving regular income. The program calculations have changed a bit…

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We’ve hit some pretty big milestones financially. Mr. ODA casually mentioned a certain number by a certain age, but our goals were more associated with quitting our full time jobs. I quit my job in May 2019. We’re in a situation for a couple of years where we’ve been ready for Mr. ODA to quit,…

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When I was little, we had friends come to our house a lot. When a certain crew came, they raided the candy drawer like they hadn’t eaten in a week. It was quite a binge. It’s because there was no candy in their house. They were fed 3 small meals each day, and that was…

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Welcome to summer, where we’re traveling and I’m not posting on time. This time it was because I had to figure out a few things with bills and health before I had the time to get to the update. I can schedule content in advance, but not this post where I need the most up…

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We had a long term tenant in this house, who moved out last Spring. We luckily had someone lined up looking for a place to live. There were a few red flags from the beginning, but I went with him because he was a friend of an old tenant of ours. Rent was always paid…

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At the end of last year, I received each property’s revised assessments for 2024 tax purposes. To no surprise, every single property drastically increased. A harder pill to swallow is to see how much it increased just from two years ago. Higher home sales are great – if you’re in the market to sell. If…

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Our turnover this year has been higher than usual. However, it’s been for good reasons, and not just because someone is looking to rent from a different landlord, so I’ll take that win. In this case, the tenant was house hunting. We knew that a year ago, and we had set up our lease to…

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It doesn’t always work out this way, but we went to 3 different stores to accomplish grocery shopping, while building another order for pickup/delivery. We were shopping sales, which means we had a list and were in-and-out. There are a few times that an in-store sale will catch our eye, but otherwise, we’re in these…

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I don’t even know where to begin. Mr. ODA and I are looking at our accounts wondering where it all went wrong. Only, it didn’t really go “wrong,” and we have plenty of money, we just don’t want to move anymore money. For not really doing any frivolous spending, we spent a lot. The rental…

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I mentioned at the beginning of the year that our general financial goal is $4 million net worth. I acknowledge that this is not a specific goal that most people can relate to. But I also pointed out that we weren’t always sitting with nearly that amount in our accounts, and that made me start…

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Typically, I write a post around this time of year on how we handled submitting our taxes. This year, I’m going to focus on the return itself, and the concept that a large return is somehow “gaming” the system. OUR TAX FILING First, I’ll remind you of our process. I spend all year getting ready…

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I was going to include this in a financial update post, but it was too long and complicated to include there. I really want this to be a lesson for anyone reading this – mostly on the renter end, but perhaps for a budding landlord as well. We tried really hard to work with the…

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I had this post mostly written by Wednesday, but we traveled earlier this week, and I haven’t kept track of the day very well. This is the first I’ve been able to update our net worth and get this done. Ironic, considering how I started this post when I expected it to be on time.…

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I recently posted “Lease Break Agreement,” where I went into the concepts we used to determine a lease break clause in our renewal with a tenant. The purpose of our fee structure was directly correlated to the time of year and probability of turning over the unit quickly. As I suspected, it took us an…

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After several years of very minimal time having to be put into rentals once they were rented, 2023 made up for it. We had a lot of damage to properties, a lot of tenant payment issues, and just a general “can we not talk about rentals for ONE week please” moments. But even with that…

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I’ve been working on the ‘year in review’ posts for 3 months. I really want to be consistent on tracking our spending and making sure I’m being intentional in our spending. Our main credit card had the nerve to tell me that it was exporting 461 line items for me to categorize and manipulate in…

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We’re just going to cut to the chase – $4 million net worth! I mentioned that this was a goal for this year. Unlike other years worth of large jumps because of purchasing houses, this was less in our control (granted, our market allocation decisions are what’s driving it…. and by “our,” I absolutely mean…

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A few years ago, I set out on this journey. I wanted to talk about money so that people would start talking about money. Talking about money is taboo. Someone will act funny talking about what they bought their house for, yet it’s public record that can be found in 2 seconds. People act like…

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Last March, it was time to make a decision on renewing the tenant’s lease on House9. There were several variables at play, and we ended up adding “lease break” terms to the renewal agreement. Here’s how and why we did such a thing. LEASE BREAK CLAUSE All of my leases are set up as a…

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I was chatting with a financially savvy friend of mine, and she asked about filing our Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). I had no idea what she was talking about. Mr. ODA had no idea what she was talking about. I sent a text to 3 of my investor Realtor buddies (in two different states), and…

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RENTALS The rentals were expensive this month with $4600 paid out. This doesn’t include work that’s currently under way, but not paid for yet. I paid for a water heater replacement, which was $1,904. I had to pay insurance on a larger property ($793). I paid the balance of the window replacement at one property,…

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I recently went on a trip. We booked one of those “cheap” airlines, where you pay a la carte. Our round trip flight was about $50. In the process, I was amazed at the number of people who were frustrated by the rules, as if you don’t have ample opportunity to learn the rules in…

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In my January financial update, I mentioned that we “somewhat on a whim” replaced our back door. I started to tell the story there, but I had more to share about the process and how we went about it. We purchased our home in June 2022 with a sliding door out to the deck. This…

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At the beginning of every year, I set up two spreadsheets in Excel. One is for our personal money management, and one is for each property’s expenses in the year (that will eventually be put into Schedule E in our taxes). I regularly mention using Excel to track your income and bills, so here’s a…

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Two weeks ago, I shared how I organize my home and manage my time. I have my own home’s finances, thirteen rental properties, three kids with two in school, investments, and whatever other ad hoc bills show up to manage. I don’t have the ability to think in a quiet and distraction-free environment after 7:30…

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As an intro for newbies: I write a monthly finance post. These posts started out as a way to manage our dollars spent per category. It evolved to show insight into my monthly money management and thought process. It’s also meant as a way to remind people that they should be looking at their money…

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I had a couple of posts teed up to reflect on last year’s finances and activities, but having some conversations with people made me realize that things that I find basic, aren’t for others. I thought I’d share some things that I do that help me be more successful (calm) in my day. I’m not…

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The day that’s in the contract as the closing date. I truly can’t believe how many people have asked some form of this question in my life recently. While I’ve had multiple in person conversations on this topic, this post really stemmed from a Facebook post. “Is it an expectation for people to be moved…

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We purchased a house in June 2022. Most of the house had been updated or was in good shape, but the master bathroom was the original from 1992. This isn’t a bad thing, but bathroom designs have changed a lot since that time. Aesthetically, the bathroom would have been fine. Functionally, I didn’t want to…

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I’m not even sure where to start for this month. It has been a whirlwind. There were a lot of tax payments last month, and this month I was still paying those among several other things. PURCHASES I purposely paid my credit card statement a little earlier than the due date so that it wouldn’t…

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We stopped at McDonald’s on our way to visit family before Thanksgiving. We sat down at a table where someone had left their receipt. Their total was over $35. This other customer had ordered a 10 piece mcnugget meal for $10.39. We had ordered a 10 piece, a large fry, and a large soda, and…

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I keep updating my investment property tracking spreadsheet to reflect the current costs of insurance and taxes. My tracking shows last year’s amount, which I use as an indicator on whether I need to look further into this year’s bill (e.g., is the amount a reasonable increase?). For so many years, most of our insurance…

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A day late, but here we are. The market has gone up a bit, so that helped our net worth increase, even though we had a $10k increase in our credit card balances because we replaced the carpet in our house. Again, we opened a new credit card for this large purchase, which will give…

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I truly wonder if everyone knows they can pay their bills without paying fees. It really bugs me when there are no ways to pay your bill online without a fee. I don’t like that so many people probably pay it, accepting the fee as necessary instead of finding another way. For the sake of…

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We went on a trip to Indianapolis last month. We did more activities than we typically would have, so our spending was more than average. The reason behind the trip was the Children’s Museum. We like visiting zoos around the country, so we used that to fill our other day there. The zoo was $91…

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Mr. ODA has been investing in short term savings bonds through Treasury Direct. Per their website: TreasuryDirect.gov is the one and only place to electronically buy and redeem U.S. Savings Bonds. By purchasing directly from the government, you ensure legitimacy of your purchase, and establishing an account provides simplicity for the purchase and ownership of…

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*This post was started in November 2022, but our son was born 3 weeks early (and on Thanksgiving), so it fell off my radar for a long time while I caught back up. Let’s dive in now. We sold our primary home at the beginning of November to move a half hour away and closer…

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Our net worth took a hit this month, over $96k less than last month. I updated the value of each house we own. I don’t do this regularly anymore because it doesn’t change significantly month-to-month and it’s very time consuming. The market is cooling from the multiple-bid market we were in over the last few…

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Today’s post is going to be short and sweet. Well, that’s how I think to start every thought I have to share, and it turns into a novel with research and ‘citations.’ Let’s see how this goes. Update: It’s long, there’s a legal citation, and I ‘teach’ math. Sorry. 😛 We have two houses with…

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Here’s an unpopular opinion: you don’t need to buy all the amenities to have a good vacation. Our financial advisor has a saying in his family, “we can’t afford ice cream.” If they wanted to, they could clearly pay for their family to have an ice cream night on vacation. However, they choose not to…

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I share these turnover stories for both sides. I want to show landlords that others go through what they go through. I also want tenants to see that if you communicate regularly and are up front, a landlord can work with you in nearly every situation. It’s the surprises that landlords don’t want to manage.…

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RENTAL FINANCES It’s the calm before the storm with rental payments. We’ll owe multiple jurisdictions’ tax payments over the next month. We only have 5 houses with an escrow account, so I’m responsible for insurance and tax payments on my own. I don’t mind it because that means I don’t have to keep money tied…

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Rent is due on the 1st of every month. There’s a grace period until the 5th. (Aside: I find it frustrating when someone says to me “rent is due on the 5th”) At 12:00 am on the 6th, rent is considered late. At that point in time, there’s a late fee applied to the amount…

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Our church had a series about “taking significant steps toward financial freedom.” In their terms, financial freedom doesn’t mean FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), which is usually what we’re referring to here. They mean that they want people to be free of financial burdens and not “bound up” by finances. Mr. ODA and I have…

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I manage all our income and expenses (at a high level, like credit card payments, not individual line items). I have a spreadsheet that I set up in 2012 and have used religiously since then. I’ve shared how I set it up in the past, but we’ve entered a new phase that makes my spreadsheet…

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It’s getting to be that time of year when large payments need to be made. I’m projecting out our account to cover several tax payments in October and December. I’m also paying insurance amounts, such as $1500 for two houses that’s currently on the credit card. We also have about $5,000 sitting on that 0%…

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I’ve not been quiet about the benefits of a credit card. We put every dollar we spend onto a credit card for the rewards, and we pay it off every month. Some cards give 1% back on purchases, some give another 1% back for payments (important to cash out your rewards to your checking account,…

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This is long; I understand. It’s a detail account of our experience dealing with a catastrophic event and navigating the insurance process and tenants. Over the winter, I received a call from one of my tenants letting me know that water was pouring out of the house next door (that’s also ours). The tenants had…

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We’ve owned rentals since February 2016. There have always been ebbs and flows on action needed by me to manage the rentals. Until this year. Suddenly we’re having a regular influx of maintenance needs; some are small like a leaking tub, while some are big like a tree falling on a house. So here’s the…

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I looked back to last year’s July to see what was going on. We had just bought our new house, demoed the master bathroom, and started painting a bunch of the new house. We were transporting two toddlers back and forth for all the work to be done. I was also talking about a vacant…

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I went to the emergency room on November 15, 2021. I resolved a bill from that day on June 30, 2023. The provider submitted a claim to my insurance company immediately after my stay there. The submitted charges were $1526. My insurance adjusted the amount, paid about $1100, and said I was responsible for about…

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About once a year now, I have some major fight with a provider over my insurance coverage and how they’ve done something wrong, and then I share about it here so that others know to be more cognizant of their billings. Here’s two quick ones, and I have a lengthier one that I’ve been working…

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Gosh, where did I leave off? Our savings account is still earning over 4% interest. Therefore, bills are being paid as close to the due date as possible, while we manage to keep the savings account balance higher. Back in December, we had a pipe burst in a rental house. The insurance quickly paid out…

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Over the past year, I tried really hard to stay on top of sharing content here, until I finally had to throw in the towel. It started because we were renovating a house while I was pregnant and had two kids to take care of, so my posts dwindled down to just the net worth…

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I purposely waited to update our net worth for this month. Two months ago, we had incurred a significant amount of expenses on our credit card. We purposely held off on paying that amount until today, which is that statement’s due date. Waiting to pay the card meant that $25k sat in our savings account…

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Well, Mr. ODA didn’t like that I shared I didn’t know where our money was last month. They’re all kinds of Treasury accounts, and I’n just logging the transactions and leaving him to it. 🙂 I don’t have a lot of bandwidth these days, but I’m learning to juggle 3 kids and our finances. PERSONAL…

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Every once in a while, I’m juggling a few rental property items, and I like to share the effort being put in. While it may be taking some of my energy now, it’s not something that happens often. Usually, Spring is our busy time because we have to manage leases ending or renewing. We have…

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Life is different these days. Our 3rd child was born on Thanksgiving, and we’ve been finishing up some projects around the house. We’ve had a few things happen with rentals, and, basically, I’m just tapped out to keep up with blogging. Mr. ODA asked me what our net worth is at these days, and so…

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Phew – 3rd month in a row of only a financial update. My apologies! Again, we’ve been juggling two houses, construction work on the new house, two toddlers, and my being pregnant (and exhausted). At the beginning of the month, we closed on our old home. It wasn’t an easy process (as usual) with the…

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I reviewed our figures, but that’s the extent of what I’ve done for this last month. We’ve had travel, sick kids, routine doctor visits, and managing both houses (as has become the norm) with projects in the new house. All this while pregnant, so my energy levels are not what I wish they’d be for…

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