Author: mrsonedollarallowance

June Financial Update

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We have been busy! The kids ended school the first few days of June, we’ve taken two trips, and one kid is has done a camp so far. The rest of May had finished up graduation and baseball things. I’ve taken a step back from work a bit. I’m not on a schedule going into work now that the kids are out of school, but I’m helping train the new girl. I eventually will get the chance to step out of the day to day, and then we go into a mode where I do more behind-the-scenes work.

PERSONAL

I started working less. At least that’s the goal. I had been working part time, and for a long while, there was another guy there to fill in my absences. He left a few months back, and it was becoming too much to manage. Even if I logged 20 hours per week, there was the weight of feeling I had to check in on things and needing to be responsive. Then there were all the random texts or calls that would take my attention, even if they were much less than they ever were. The office was in the process of hiring a full time position person for that role, but I wanted out. I wanted to enjoy my summer with my kids and not have the pull to be there. I tried to quit twice. They pushed forward the position that we had been discussing for a year and made it official, while calling in a promotion with no added pay (I guess the increased flexibility will be the benefit). The new person started on the 15th. She has been really great, but I’ve still put in more hours than I wish. The good thing is that I stepped foot in the office for the first time this week for a couple of hours yesterday. My general goal is to get to like 15 hours per week, and my tasks will be organizing financial data and not agent-facing anymore.

I’ve been working on getting my things in order as a notary. At work, we have our own title company, and there have been several issues with the closings. Their work load is down, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s because our own agent investors are tired of the problems and letting their clients go elsewhere. It’s quite frustrating to see. Well, I’m a fixer and helper. I wanted to get my notary so I could manage these relationships better. I got the main paperwork in order, but now I need to do the classes to be a title closer and get myself registered online so I can be selected for business. It wasn’t that expensive. I’m all in for about $120 once I buy a stamp (more if there’s a fee for the classes). Supposedly one closing could bring in that amount, so we’ll see.

Mr. ODA is working still, and it’s going better than it was. It’s become less of a hurdle to figuring out the schedule and conflicts with baseball season and end-of-year school activities out of the way. Now the hurdles are the swaths of days off for our trips.

We’ve taken two trips so far this month. We have another one next month. We’ve also gone to Kentucky Kingdom on our season pass for a day, with a few more planned for the summer. Our trip there was awesome. The kids had such a great time and everyone was in a good mood all day. We did the regular rides and were there for about double the hours I had expected because it was going so well. Our next trip will explore the water park, and I think it’ll be a perfect day for that next week in the 90s (our last trip was 73, so we intentionally didn’t plan to get in the water).

We have one camp week of the summer done for one of the kids. Two big kids go to an outdoor camp soon, and then there’s a half day camp for the oldest later this summer. This week’s camp has been across town. I was looking forward to getting things done with 2 kids in tow instead of 3, but I haven’t been able to prioritize playing with them and running errands like I had hoped, which you’ll see why in the next section.

RENTALS

Well, this post is late, so technically the blog world shouldn’t know about the week we’ve been through yet, but let’s lay it out. I actually had quite a few people pay rent late this month, but everyone communicated their issues and timing, so it worked out fine. Two people paid a late fee because they didn’t tell me the right information or told me late (and they’re repeat offenders on poor communication). If you communicate with me and give me the right information and uphold your commitment, I won’t charge you a late fee. That’s not income I’m expecting, so it does more to a tenant’s life to not have that money going out than it does to my life to have the money coming in. However, if you can’t tell me the truth or communicate clearly, I need to protect myself. I don’t want to set a precedent that you can walk all over me or pay whenever you feel like it because I still have my bills to pay for that house to stay standing. Anyway, with that rant out of the way, one house has not paid rent still.

We have a tenant who fell on hard times in February. She intends to pay June rent on July 3rd. She has been consistently later and later in paying her rent. While we work with our tenants regularly, they have to do their part and show their effort to prioritize us. It will never cease to amaze me how many people do not prioritize the roof over their head. Her financials were questionable when she applied, but she technically qualified for our list. The fact that there have been no partial payments and she continuously tells us a date she’ll pay, but she doesn’t pay then, has made me lose patience. She said she prayed on it, and she wants to stay in our place for another year. We said we needed to see rent paid, and if she could make a partial payment on the 12th, then we’d consider an extension. No payment. And then when I finally got Mr. ODA to take the hard stance in their communication, she tried to guilt us that she did tell us she’s working on it, and he had to explain that she in fact did not follow through on what she’s been saying. She was supposed to vacate June 30, but now that this has dragged on, she’s vacating July 31, which makes me mad. I had purposely put her as June 30 so that I wouldn’t be looking at an August rental period with back to school for a house that is notoriously hard to get rented because of all the stairs, and now here I am again. Oh well, I have no control over that anymore and just need to get through it.

Last weekend we received inches of rain. One of our KY houses has a history of water intrusion at the back door. We can’t figure it out, but the lack of lip/sill/curb because the door was installed at concrete level is really the issue. We probably need to install a curb and get a smaller door in there now that I think of it. Well, the tenants have been really patient with the water intrusion and they just lay towels when it happens. Last weekend, it was way worse. They had water in two spots they never do, and a lot more water than usual by the back door. It happened on Monday, and on Thursday, I could still get water to come through the floor boards. I started pulling the LVP out. As soon as I got everything exposed, it dried really quickly. The problem was that the washer was blocking my ability to get anymore boards out. I tried to get a board out of the middle that I could just reinstall with wood glue down the road, but my utility knife was useless. The board was eating more out of my blade than the blade was doing damage to the board connection. I regrouped. I went to Lowe’s and got a new tool and a different kind of blade for the utility knife. We’re heading over there today to get some more flooring out of the way. While this sounds awful – for me to pull out the floor at the back door, where there’s been consistent water intrusion, and not see any mold, was absolutely the best thing on my day yesterday. There was mold behind the baseboard in the drywall at the back door, which wasn’t surprising in the least. I threw that away and will be able to install new stuff. We’ll likely go with the plastic version of that so that it keeps the water away better because this isn’t a problem that’s going away any time soon. There’s a flood advisory for the next couple of days, so it’ll be good that the floor is out of the way for a bit.

So while Mr. ODA and I are grappling with next steps on this basement water issue, a tenant in VA texts me. I love my tenants that apologize profusely for telling me something is wrong. I promise, it’s OK to report that there’s an issue to me! This is the house that had MAJOR termite damage (look, another storm we’ve weathered!). She reported that a burner on the stove won’t turn on anymore and that the toilet in the bathroom is taking a long time to fill up. I texted my handyman buddy and he said he could get out there. That’s off my plate now. I’ll just pay an invoice when it comes in.

And finally (dare I say, this is the last issue of the month??), a house in KY also apologized profusely, telling me the AC is out. I checked my maintenance log, and while I’ve managed issues at this house for the AC, it hasn’t been replaced. Knowing the house, this HVAC guy this morning is going to tell me to replace the whole thing. HVAC is one of those things that I can’t do a single thing to trouble shoot it, so I just contact “my guy” and he’ll tell me what’s next. This is definitely a “throw money at the problem” situation, but it doesn’t take any of my time, and that’s the priority to me these days.

SUMMARY

Over the years, I’ve learned to just get through things. I’ve learned that even the biggest seeming problems subside. A tenant trashes a house; we get junk luggers out there and replace everything. Our wallet hurts for a bit, but then you move on. A house floods; insurance kicks in, and we basically did nothing except send a few emails. When I started my job, there was a bison on the front cover of my welcome binder. They were pointing to the fact that bison will walk into a storm because the fastest way through a storm is through it, not trying to outrun it. This thought consumed me. I had heard it before, but it didn’t stick like it did then. So while there may be juggling for a little while, it’s not the end of the world.

NET WORTH

Because of the things I’m juggling these days and trying to prioritize time with my kids, I don’t have a break down of our spending since the last update. Mr. ODA also asked me to split out our Roth IRA accounts from the investment line item because we’re going to be doing Roth conversions. Maybe I’ll do a post about what that is, and that’ll help me finally know what that even means to us. I’m a very visual person, so once I start seeing the implications of that, I’ll understand it better. He’s been managing that and how it affects our money/income/taxes all along.

Our credit cards are $3k less than last month, and the majority of the balance is because of the windows we replaced in our personal residence. We paid the deposit back in January or February. They came and replaced the windows in March, but there were two broken frames and several sashes with imperfections. They came a couple of weeks ago with the replacements, only for one sash to have broken glass. I had also found the same etching on the inside of the glass in the mean time, so they have two sashes to bring me. For some reason, they haven’t come looking for the balance owed while they’re still not installing complete windows, which I appreciate, but also would have understood if they wanted their payment. At some point in the near future, about $5k will be added to the credit card balance for that. It’s on a 0% interest credit card so that we can manage our cashflow and not have to pay that off until the promotional rate expires (this is a regular thing we do, and I have posts about it). It would seem there’s a high probability our next promotional rate credit card we open is for braces because we’re at that age now – eek.

This past month, I paid multiple insurance premiums for rental properties and our car insurance (which is paid twice a year). In May I had paid just under $2k for taxes on rental properties. But overall, our net worth is higher than last month.

Now I’m off to make a lunch for my camp kid, get her across town to camp, tear up some more tenant basement flooring, play some pickleball, and maybe lay on the couch for a quick minute before I go across town for her camp pick up and a 90 minute gymnastics sessions.

Kansas City Trip

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After we take a trip, I like to document our spending and activities. For one, it helps me keep track of where we’ve been and what we did there. But also, it’s meant to show that you can take a trip without extravagant spending.

Mr. ODA and I have a plan to see all the baseball stadiums. I’ve been to 15. He has a few more from childhood. He thought it would be good to get to a new stadium as our Spring Break travel. Kansas City is about 9 hours away, meaning it’s driving distance and we don’t need to pay for 5 flights. We didn’t do much research, but found things to do there. We also took a day to go to Topeka and see the Capitol, which is another favorite thing for me.

WHAT TO DO

Topeka was just over an hour away, so we went there for a day. Honestly, Kansas City was so sketchy feeling that it was a nice break to be somewhere else. We visited the Capitol and did 2 tours (Dome Tour and the regular free historic tour), both of which were free. We then stopped by the Brown v Board of Education site, where we spent a considerable amount of time. We finished up with a stop at the airport where they had an Army museum.

For the Royals Game, they had a Sunday family pass where it was $20 per person. That included upper level seats, a hot dog, a soda, and parking. There’s a monopoly on parking there, which was $21 on it’s own. So we spent $100 on the tickets. Then we spent $6 on coins for the outfield experience, where the kids were able to play putt putt and ride the carousel, which was adorable. We like walking around the whole concourse at stadiums. I was nervous that there wasn’t much to see at this stadium, but the outfield experience was a nice surprise out there. On Sundays, they also let the kids run the bases, so that was a fun experience for them. They went from 1st to 3rd and got a coupon for a free ice cream cone at the end.

There was a WWI Memorial Tower, which was $6 per person to go to the top. I thought we were climbing stairs, but it was an elevator ride. Kids 5 and under were free, so the total cost of this was $18.

We went to the money museum in the Federal Reserve building there. That was really cool, free, and definitely worth the visit. We got to see the vault and how they count money.

Street Car is free. Our house was 2 blocks from the stop. It would have been an easy walk if there weren’t 3 little kids involved. The first block was really long, and the second block was straight up hill. So we opted to drive the two blocks and park right by the stop, but that saved us from paying for parking downtown. Although, there were hardly any people there, so it wasn’t like we would have struggled to find parking, just that we’d have to pay for it.

We tried exploring the city. We stopped at the river walk. There’s a nice mural down there, but otherwise not much of interest. We stopped at the library. It was pretty, and the kids appreciated the ability to play in the kids section and read some books. They were fairly disappointed that they couldn’t check out a book!

We stopped at the art museum. It was free, but it was a real art museum, which is not conducive to 3 little kids. They did great, and they’re not crazy. But man… you don’t realize how many times a kid just casually rubs their hand along something until you’re in a place where you can’t even touch the walls that are holding the art! They had a sculpture garden, so we got to run and have fun after the tension of being inside. There is also an art alley in the city. It’s graffiti art and worth a look, but it doesn’t feel safe when you’re there, so keep your head on a swivel.

We walked the mall, which had a cute little dinosaur exhibit for the kids to play at. And we walked around Union Station. If you have time to kill and want to spend money, there’s plenty for families to do there, but that wasn’t of interest to our type of trip (e.g., childrens museum).

TOTAL COST: $1,577

The AirBnB was a struggle, but it ended up costing $1,077. We had a place booked for about a week, and then she cancelled on us at 6 pm the night before our arrival. The silver lining was that we didn’t get there and have to move to a different place (which we’ve done before). She said the house was without water, but we weren’t able to corroborate that with the city’s water outage map. We contacted AirBnB to address the fact that this was a huge inconvenience, and that there wasn’t anything else in the same price range and location that we wanted. AirBnB was amazing (albeit slow) to work with, and they were very helpful. We were awake until 11 pm trying to solve that situation. They gave us a huge credit to a place in the same location to bring it to about the same price as the original booking. Note that AirBnB owners are able to charge whatever they want under the ‘tax’ section, and that’s not dictated by the area they’re in, which I find fascinating. One place had a 28% tax added, even though everyone else in the area was around 16%.

As we drove in, we were a bit concerned about the area. Houses were boarded up and the whole area just looked desolate. When we got to the house, I happened to check a window and see that it was unlocked. I then proceeded to check the rest of the windows only to find that in a 3 story building, only 3 windows were locked upon our arrival. That gave me an eerie feeling and clouded the trip. One window couldn’t even be locked because I could hold the locking mechanism in my hand. It took them until the last full day of our trip to get there with 2 screws to put it together, so that was annoying. We also had a weird experience on the last night where it sounded like someone was trying to enter via the key pad. That brings me to another AirBnB complaint: there should be a way to lock guests into the house at night. I don’t like that there’s no extra locking mechanism on top of the keypad once I’m inside.

Kansas City gas was $3.29-3.39, while Lexington KY was sitting at $3.99. That was a nice surprise when we got there. Our total gas cost was $125.

We eat most of our meals at the AirBnB when we travel. Three little kids who are picky eaters just doesn’t yield to much fun when we go to a restaurant. We did travel into Kansas for a BBQ meal. Otherwise, we grabbed quick meals on the go or ate at the house. This kept our eating expense to $251 for a family of 5, gone for 5 days.

OVERALL

The officials there seem to be working on the city. I don’t know if it’s related to FIFA hosting or just a general need to build it back up, and what this place may have been a few years ago. The city itself is actually very clean. There wasn’t trash and graffiti all over. But it gave a very heavy ‘abandoned’ feeling. There were hardly any professionals walking around during the work day. There were hardly any cars parked on the street or in the garages. The Census claims over 500k people in the city limits, and I absolutely didn’t get that feeling. There was a large homeless population. As the week wore on, I realized they really kept to themselves. They weren’t asking for handouts and they just existed around us, but it was overwhelming when we first got there.

We’ve been really busy around here, so my goal of the trip was to relax and not feel rushed. We brought the kids’ scooters and let them play outside at the house a good bit. We never felt rushed to get to the next place and were happy just seeing the sights versus doing things that we could do at home (like a childrens museum).

New Car Financial Decision Part II

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In January, I shared why we chose to finance our new (used) car. To those who know us, they would think paying interest would be an immediate no, but there are reasons that it may work in our favor. We also have a mentality that the best decision is the one that makes our money work the hardest, not an overarching thought that debt is bad.

The dealership was offering $1000 off the purchase if we financed. Mr. ODA ran the numbers, and we decided that was worth paying the minimum 4 months of interest. I paid off the loan, so now we have the actual numbers.

Here’s what I had said back in January:
The financing was 6.99% and we chose the option that allowed pay off after 4 payments. There was an origination fee of $175, which is rolled into the principle. Our payment is $151.94. The first 4 payments hold $175.07 worth of interest. So we will pay $175.07 of interest and the $175 origination fee as a means of taking $1,000 off the list price. That nets us, including the $30 of credit card rewards, $679.96 less on the list price. After the 4th payment is made in May, we’ll make a lump sum payment of about $7,134 to pay off the loan.

I did not read any prepayment penalty data, but Mr. ODA wasn’t so sure. We made a lump sum payment to bring the balance down to about $2500 in February. What I wasn’t prepared for was that the loan system decided that I didn’t owe any monthly payments for several years at that point. I decided to just go ahead and make my monthly payment a couple more times after that even though it was being applied as principle only and not a monthly payment.

We paid $175 origination fee and $112.49 in interest. So our net save on the final purchase was $712.51. I also included the fact that we made $30 by only financing the bare minimum and putting the rest on a credit card that got us 2% (there was no fee from the dealership to put this on the credit card, which was also a factor in the decision), bringing the net to $742.51 worth of the $1000 off the purchase price. This was better than projection because of the way their loan system applied our lump sum payment.

May Financial Update

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After not wanting to know the details of March’s expenses because Mr. ODA threw me a surprise party, I was pleasantly surprised to see our spending in April. Now, with that said, while my categorization of expenses cover April 1-30, my stories here go through this date in May. And May has been a doozy.

We changed our insurance carrier as of May 1. We put a concerted effort into getting some routine things out of the way before our insurance changed because we weren’t too confident in the new policy’s coverage. Mr. ODA got a physical. I got an eye exam, which is more expense ($116) due to the contact fitting, and became more expensive when we moved on to acknowledging the astigmatism that we’ve ignored for the last 5 years because it’s so slight. Then that leads to buying contacts ($300). I do need to submit the reimbursement request for the contacts that I paid out of pocket for, so at least some of that should come back.

In mid-April, I started having chest pain. That lead to us wiping out the deductible. Such unfortunate timing. We could have walked away from that policy only needing a couple of hundred applied to the deductible, and then I didn’t take care of myself while sick, so the virus attacked the wall of my heart. Lovely. My first office appointment was at a new clinic, and they said if I paid in full, they’d apply a 10% discount. I’ve had to learn to navigate the world of medical billing (even more in depth than I already had due to poorly executed claims) because of the deductible concept. So the lady’s statement was correct – I still owed about $3000 on my deductible. That’s what she billed me. That’s a normal statement for me to hear. What I hadn’t thought about was – but who will get there first? If her claim wasn’t first in line, then my deductible payment wouldn’t go to her. Narrator: she was not first in line. So now I’ve paid $3k to this company, but I only actually owe her about $900. Meanwhile, the one who was first in line now wants their payment, understandably. I’m trying to hold off on that until after the 20th so that it’s on the next credit card cycle. And through all of this, I also need to fix my log in to my old insurance account to be able to verify that they’ve even accounted for my deductible correctly because I swear I’ve overpaid my deductible the last two years due to too many claims happening at one time, but it’s convoluted and I’ve just given up tracking it both years (I know, this is against everything I tell you to do, but shew, it’s been quite the year or so around here).

On top of that, Mr. ODA works at Lowe’s, and they have a spring holiday period where employees get a 20% discount. So now there’s a ton of Lowe’s transactions on our credit card that’s inflating our spending. While the details of that will be in next month’s update, it is reflected in the net worth calculation I have here since these are current numbers.

RENTALS

We got one house rented as of May 1. That was an anticipated project, and the tenant who left had lived there for 6.5 years. We were gone the first week of April, so we ended up losing the month of income, but the actual work to turn it over took very few hours (at least compared to most of the turnover we do). There’s one more house outstanding to know if she’s renewing, and there’s one house that will turn over at the end of June. That woman moved in over the winter on a 6 month lease. She’s been extremely difficult, and I’m not sad to see her go. For instance, it’s the 22nd, and she still hasn’t paid May’s rent. The good news is that the turnover should go quickly since we did a massive effort to spruce it up at the last turnover.

NET WORTH

The market has recovered a bit, so we’re trending up again instead of stagnant on the net worth. I categorized our spending for April, but since we took a trip, the ‘entertainment’ category is taking over the graph.

I took out the expenses related to our trip to see what was left. Entertainment is still high because we spent $785 on season passes for skiing next year. This also include our daughter’s gymnastics and our gym membership. Just funny that the graph didn’t change because our proportion of spending was the same.

Over the past few months, I’ve worked on increasing our monthly cash flow a bit with rent increases. This isn’t a money-maker, but just trying to stay on top of the routine cost increases (e.g., taxes, insurance) that are coming our way. Once all the increases go into effect, it’ll be another $400 per month. But that’s also contingent on what we get the house that’s turning over rented at. That seems like a lot, but you’d be surprised at what our cost increases are. I usually do a post comparing all those changes in the Fall.

This month our cash went down too because I had to pay the health insurance costs and three houses worth of taxes. I updated our home values now that it’s the spring market; I update these numbers about twice per year.

Year in Review

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MY YEAR

This year was nothing like I expected it to be going into it. I’m not usually one to say it’s been a hard year or look for a “new start” with a new year, but this last year was challenging. For one, raising 3 kids is not for the weak. But I started the year on an HOA board, working as a financial consultant for a few hours, and serving on the city’s Landlord Advisory Board. I eventually handed the Landlord Advisory Board off to Mr. ODA and let go of the financial consultant work, but ended up on 3 HOA boards. Lucky for me, one of the boards has someone who works even harder than me, so that’s requiring very little time of mine. The last board sucked me in because the same management company works with me in my own neighborhood, but that also doesn’t take much time. And with all that, let’s not forget that I took on a part time job.

When I left my career in 2019, I had no intentions of working “long term.” That was the goal from the start – get rental properties to cover my salary, and not work again. Well, it turns out, my brain likes a challenge (and a different one than figuring out why a child is whining for the 687th time today). I’ve held several temporary positions (e.g., Census, horse race meets) that fill some time, make a little money, and then I move on. When I was approached with an offer to work in an office on a set schedule, I cried. That was the furthest thing I wanted. I laid out all my expectations, particularly that my kids come first and I quit working so I could be at all their activities, and they obliged. I’m severely overqualified for the position, but I know I’m helping. I have a strong desire to help people. Ten months in, and I’m still there about 22 hours per week. It doesn’t seem like it’s a lot, but it takes away my flexibility. Having to coordinate that I want to be at a kid’s activity during work hours is frustrating. The work that I’m doing have daily deadlines, so even on the day’s that I’m only supposed to be putting an hour or two in, I still have that hanging over my head.

On top of all the things I was managing, Mr. ODA took the Deferred Resignation Program. He stopped working on April 30th, and we collected a pay check until the beginning of October. It was a blessing that he wasn’t working because we didn’t need to figure out childcare for the kids over the summer while I was working part time. But it’s had its own challenges navigating the change in expectations and daily dynamic that we’re still learning.

FAMILY

We basically let the kids do one activity each, but there’s wiggle room. So during the last school year, our oldest did an after school activity that met once per week (e.g., checkers, kickball) and baseball. I absolutely love going to the ball field. Our middle has held steady at gymnastics for just over a year, which is once per week. Our youngest is gigantic and athletic, but he only just turned 3 so he hasn’t been eligible for any sports yet. His big news of the year is that, after being waitlisted at the start of the school year, he’s now going to preschool twice per week. He started that in December, and it’ll go halfway through May.

We tried our hand at camping with the kids and dog, and it went very well. We went on a cruise and visited western KY, WV, NY twice, and OH. We took the kids skiing multiple times, and they did really well.

FINANCIALS

Mr. ODA had a 6 figure job with the government. That pay check, as I mentioned, covered through the end of September. I worked as a consultant for a school startup, worked part time nearly all of the year, and subbed a few times at the kid’s old preschool; these things brought in over $22k.

We did quite a few things to bring in extra income throughout the year too. I consigned some of kids things and brought in about $800 to offset Christmas. The credit card rewards we took in was over $2k. Mr. ODA does ‘shops’ (secret shopper), which brought in just under $1500. Some of that payment accounted for food reimbursement, but we see it as a way to eat at a restaurant as a family of 5 without it being ridiculously expensive. Then other random reimbursements from companies that we were owed are added in, and our “additional income” (i.e., income that I did not project at the beginning of the year) totaled over $43k. Each year, it ends up being around this number that we bring in outside of wages and rental income.

SUMMARY

This is really just a way to account for the crazy that was 2025. We accomplished a lot. It came at a cost of family dynamic and happiness. But now that we’re a few months into 2026, I see a light at the end of the tunnel. We have some changes that we’re making, and I am hopeful that I’ll have my flexibility back, and the ability to do things that brought me joy back in 2024.

Insurance Decisions

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Last year, Mr. ODA took the deferred resignation program offer. As part of this offer, we kept our insurance through the end of September as normal because his pay check continued as normal. After the separation, we kept our policy for 30 days and then could opt to keep the insurance policy for 18 months. Opting in meant that we had to pay 100% of the cost of the policy, which is $1,906 per month.

Around the time that this decision needed to be made, an opportunity came up in my office to join their insurance policy. With the coverage offered by my employer, it was still going to cost us over $1700 per month. There were several red flags from the insurance agent, and there was gap coverage, which would have required me to submit claim information to a 3rd party to get further coverage. As someone who has to fight nearly every EOB that comes through my mail, I really didn’t want to take on having to also submit it and manage that request. In the end, we decided it wasn’t worth the risk of losing the “enemy we know,” nor that I would eventually quit this job and we would lose that insurance.

Around the beginning of the year, Mr. ODA discovered that insurance premiums are only considered “pre tax” if they’re through an employer. So since we are paying our own insurance, it doesn’t count. That started a quest for Mr. ODA to find a part-time job that he could get insurance.

He interviewed several times with Lowe’s. There were several bumps in the road over the last couple of months, but he’s ended up with a cashier position near our house. He needs to work at least 13 hours a pay period to qualify for their insurance. Their insurance is not great. This is a gamble.

Here are the questions I asked myself during the process.

  1. Are our current doctors in network? The website has a way for me to search by doctor names and practice names. We have moved a lot in our life. I had a few doctors I saw in Fairfax, VA. Then we moved to Richmond, VA, and I had a few other doctors I liked. Actually, when we decided to move to central KY, one of the biggest “against” items were the doctors. I loved my ob-gyn. I loved the kids’ pediatrician. I loved that there was a kid urgent care near our house, which we used when our oldest split his forehead open. We moved just outside Lexington for a few years, and I settled into a routine there. Less than 2 years later, we moved into Lexington, and I needed to start over with the doctors. It took me some time to get into a routine, but I now have myself and all the kids on routine check up schedules with a primary care, dentist, and eye doctor. So while I COULD get new doctors, it just isn’t something I’m all that interested in figuring out. At this time, it appears all our current doctors, except our eye doctor, is in network.
  2. How much is it going to cost? Currently, we have a high deductible plan. Even with that statement, you’ll be surprised to find out the deductible is only $3,800. We haven’t hit that yet this year though. When the kids go to the doctor, it’s about $81 until we meet the deductible and it drops to about $5. Going forward, this policy has a $20 copay for all regular visits and no deductible. However, urgent care is a $100 copayment, and there is $0 covered for an ER visit. That’s scary. I use the kid’s urgent care pretty frequently. I also have used the urgent care by my house (although it’s terrible) more often than I use my doctor’s office. Having to gauge whether something can wait until tomorrow’s office hours or if it’s worth $100 copay is going to be a stressor I wish wasn’t there. I’m also expecting that everything will shake itself out.
  3. What is the coverage like? There are a few key things I’m looking at in the summary of benefits. There are the simple ones like, “is it a copayment or coinsurance” and “is there a deductible?” Then there are more complicated ones like, “are routine dental visits covered,” and “are diagnostic lab work and imaging included?” Both of those are no. That’s concerning. However, there is supplementary insurance options that will get us vision, dental, and accident coverage (e.g., ER payment). This is less than ideal, as it was one of the reasons that I didn’t want my employer’s insurance, but I will figure out the process to submit claims for extra payment. If I’m not working, I’ll have better time to manage that.

The cost is a glaring win on this less-than-stellar policy. For $186 per pay check (every other week), we get this insurance. That’s about $372 per month, give or take those extra pay checks that shake out. Essentially, that’s $4,800 per year. Currently, our premium is $22,872 per year, plus a $3,800 deductible that has to be met. The difference is glaring. So I’m hopeful that our sick visits being a $20 copay and the occasional need for urgent care at $100 per visit will still not exceed the cost of the policy we currently have. Plus, the policy we currently have is painful to manage, so how bad can another option really be?

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.