Author: mrsonedollarallowance

Big Summer Trip: Part 3

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I did not intend for this to be a 3 part post, but NJ had a lot more to it than I expected. Now it’s Delaware’s turn.

We arrived in Delaware on the Cape May ferry and drove straight to our hotel in Lewes. We got there fairly late, but the room was amazing. We always seem to get the nicest places when we have no intention of being there for very long! Mr. ODA was able to book it for cheaper than we expected, and it was about half the cost of what we planned to spend on a crappy motel in Wildwood.

LEWES

Our first stop in Lewes was the Cannonball House. It was a small house by the water that commemorated the early 1900s of navigation on the water. It was free and worth a visit. Our oldest got to hold a real cannonball. There were examples of how early morse code was used, and the kids got to try their hand at communicating in that language. We also visited the Zwaanendael Museum. This was also free and was very welcoming of children. There were activities for them to do on both floors, and they were encouraged to touch and explore. I wanted to do Lightship Overfalls, but their hours are very limited, and we weren’t going to be around for the timing. Lewes is an adorable, quaint town that gives New England vibes. I would definitely recommend a visit.

DOVER

From Lewes, we drove north to Dover. As I’ve mentioned in the past, we love to see the state capitol buildings, so this is a must for us if we’re nearby. There were no assigned tour times, just that the tour needed to conclude by 1:00. After visiting, I’m assuming this was because the lady giving the tours just does tours as people show up, but she wants to leave by 1. She brings her german shephard to work with her, and she was just the sweetest pup. This lady doing the tour was incredible. You could tell she cared a lot about the history. She spoke with enthusiasm instead of regurgitating data memorized. Her dad served in the House in the 1930s too! The security guards and this lady were very welcoming. We shared the awful NJ experience with them, and they said they hear it often. We ended up staying there until 2:30 when the kids finally made it known that they had to get moving and were tired of sitting around while we chatted. We walked around the area and visited the original capitol house. It was so hot, and we were hungry, so we had to give up exploring and fix that.

We grabbed some Wawa sandwiches and found picnic benches to eat our late lunch. There were quite a few homeless people around, so I kept my head on a swivel. Our youngest left his water bottle at Wawa. When I went back for it, the worker laughed and said “oh honey, you’re in the hood. That thing is long gone.” I actually laughed in her face because nothing about Dover felt ghetto or unsafe having grown up on Long Island and visiting Queens and the City.

We came back on another day to visit the Air Mobility Command Museum. This was also free. It had planes that were open for us to explore, an old air traffic control tower to explore, and several areas with things to learn about war planes and the history of communication in the military.

MILFORD

Our visit was to a friend’s house in Milford. We didn’t explore very much of Milford itself because we went to the beaches, but it was a great little area. One afternoon, we went to Big Oyster Brewery for happy hour. It’s a bar with a playground area for the kids. The weather was great with no humidity, so it was a lovely afternoon hanging out there.

BEACHES

The first day, we went to Cape Henlopen State Park. It was $20 for a day pass to enter. The beach was lovely. Mr. ODA likes to play in the waves, so we went to a place on the ocean. Turns out, the two older kids absolutely love playing in the waves also. We were on the beach for about 4 hours. We went to the food truck for lunch. It was really expensive, and, other than the fries, not great. There are lots of trails to explore the area there, but we just drove around to get the sights instead of taking tired and cranky kids on walking trails in the heat.

On the third day, we visited Rehoboth. We got there at 9:30. Parking starts at 10, which is also when people start showing up. When we got there, there were hardly any people. It filled in as the day went by. We spent 4.5 hours on the beach that day and had packed our own food. We rode a few rides at Fun Land and walked the boardwalk. We wrapped up with ice cream on the main drag. But the place was just so crowded that we were happy to head home for dinner.

SUMMARY

So for 17 days, we explored NY, NJ, and DE. In total, we spent over $1300, which included two hotel nights, but otherwise we stayed with family and friends. In DE, we bought groceries, some meals out, parking at the beaches, and gas, so the total spending came to $340 for the 4 nights we were there.

August Financial Update

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I’m tired is an understatement. The rentals have hit the point where they’ve worn me out. I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m over them. Tenants have hit an oddly needy phase where they feel the need to walk me (and my property manager) through all their days and issues instead of keeping it a professional relationship. There’s been slightly more turnover than we usually see (yet they’re from houses that had been occupied for several years, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that eventually they need to move on). On the personal front, I feel like I’m juggling a lot of thoughts even though I don’t feel like it’s too much. There’s just a lot of brain power going towards decisions and organization.

PERSONAL

Kids started school a week ago. We’re still establishing a routine, but sports are forcing the schedule more than anything. Everyone seems happy though.

I had to pay the final payment for the windows this past month. It was delayed as they had to replace several windows and sashes that were damaged. I appreciated they didn’t ask for final payment while waiting for things to be right. That increased our credit balances by $6k. Then we bought a couch. I’d say it was on a whim, but it was something being considered for months. We walked into Costco to see a sectional we liked, but as we started thinking about it, the sectional really wouldn’t work the way we want in the space. We walked around Ashley, picked an option, thought about it for a few days, and then went back to purchase it. We were able to get it for a couple of hundred less than anticipated based on final price, and it was delivered at the end of that week.

I’m volunteering on the PTA at my kids’ school. I walked in a room and ended up VP for that, but so far it’s been great. We’ve been busy; everyone wants to help, so it’s encouraging. I’m on 3 HOA boards, one of which meets monthly and has a project that we’re trying to wrap up. I’m still working a few hours; much less than I had been, but it’s still something that I need to give attention to. Gymnastics, soccer, baseball. The littlest one starts school in September. Not too much, but enough to feel it. I’m also driving the kids to school every morning, which wasn’t the plan and wasn’t how the last two years went. However, their bus stop is an hour before school starts, and I already feel like they need to wake up too early, so I committed to driving. Things are shaking out and it’s getting easier though.

I am close to finishing a bathroom renovation we started several weeks ago. It took me two months to get a mirror for over the sink. And then Mr. ODA cut and nailed in a trim piece that I need to caulk and paint still. There are a few paint touch ups I’ve been waiting to do since I knew that trim piece would need painted, so that’s on my radar. I changed how the kids’ backpacks, coats, and school things would be managed this year. I removed them from the mud room (since it’s small) and made a wall in the dining room a place for all those things to live. It’s working better at this point now that we’re less crowded. I was hoping that walking past the kitchen table with water bottles on it would help them remember water bottles, but I’m not seeing that success rate yet.

RENTALS

I don’t even know where to begin here. We have a DV case at one house, mice at two houses, had to remove someone from a lease due to a divorce, had to turnover a house with an entitled previous tenant and a less than stellar pool of candidates (but it’s rented), an HVAC call that was completely unnecessary but I did it to appease a tenant, another tenant complaining that her washer smells (that’s not on me), and another house where the tenant complained that the sink faucet base is peeling (again, not doing anything with that). I think my expectations are just off. I’m used to some time where the houses run on autopilot, but they’re taking a lot more of my time these days, even if it’s just managing who still owes rent.

This month, everyone paid rent “on time.” Actually, one was late by a day, and I did have to follow up, but she apologized and said she fell asleep before her check cleared and had just woken up. There’s one house that pays twice per month, and they’re going to be two days late on the rent that’s owed this week.

Actually, quick aside. Since when do checks clear in the middle of the day? I’ve never experienced this. On my pay day, the pay is sitting in my account after 6 am that day. Someone is claiming that her check clears at 1:00 pm. Someone else was saying they needed to wait until 12:30 for their check to hit their account. How is that happening? I pay people via Gusto at work and I can’t set a payment TIME, just a date.

NET WORTH

It’s crazy that this balance is $100k higher than last month. I updated the market values of the houses. None of them increased, but a few decreased. I’m not surprised knowing that market prices have cooled.

These posts are specifically to talk about the actual money aspect of life. It’s not meant to do anything except share regular life decision making, establish a constant reminder that the small decisions build your wealth, and remove the stigma of talking about money (while also not perpetuating the thought that it’s cool to complain about being broke all the time). So while I highlight “net worth,” I felt compelled to point out that wealth isn’t that number. Wealth is the freedom we’ve established for ourselves. We are available to take the kids to school and pick them up without a rushed/stressed demeanor. We are able to attend all the school events. We can drop everything and be at the school in 10 minutes if a kid needs us, without checking in with a boss or asking for time off. We can take trips during the week (when school isn’t in session). We can provide activities and food for our kids without stress.

None of our wealth was handed to us. None of it was by accident. 98% of the credit goes to Mr. ODA for even have the thought process (I like to take my share for being open minded and trusting his research). My dad was a blue collar worker and my mom worked multiple part time jobs. We never felt like we were “poor,” but working to earn money was what I knew. I believe all your experiences in life are for a reason, but you need to be open to seeing the lesson in those moments. I was open to Mr. ODA’s life plan and financial ideas. I went through Amway with a team that taught “think bigger” type moments for your time. I went to DC for my job way earlier than I ever planned to, and it seemed to be so I could learn the lesson that trading time for money wasn’t how I wanted to run my life.

We STRUGGLED before we were married. We wanted to buy a house, but we didn’t have 20% down. We wanted 20% down to avoid paying mortgage insurance that we feel is a waste of money. We SCRAPED together $80k to get that down payment in Northern Virginia. There were retirement loans, gifts from family, and a concerted effort to spend less than $5 per day on food. We didn’t have a mentality that we were owed anything or that we deserved to give ourselves treats for getting through the week. We weren’t poor, but we knew we had a big goal in mind, and that owning real estate was going to get us more control of our money. Things didn’t really spring board until we sold that VA house and had over $120k sitting in our bank. That’s when more investments came in. That’s when setting multiple small goals made it so that I could quit working full time without us feeling the pressure. I’ve told our story multiple times.

I just wanted to acknowledge that the point here isn’t the literal dollar amount. It’s the freedom that we have. It’s the ability to be on our terms and schedule. Mr. ODA is out golfing this morning. We played pickleball yesterday morning. We aren’t working for our weekend. We aren’t flashing extravagant spending on the weekend because we spent the week working 10 hour days to have the money to live for 2 days and carry the stress of work home with us. And so with that, just take a moment and look at your finances and see where there’s a creep in spending that could be taking you away from a goal. Think about a bigger picture of life.

Big Summer Trip: Part 2

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I discussed the first half of this trip in a previous post. We spent over a week in NY visiting my family, and then we went to NJ for two days and finally on to DE for several days. Mr. ODA thought we could use the opportunity to explore some areas we typically wouldn’t. Usually we’re just trying to get home, which takes a whole day, so we don’t make stops near NY. The whole trip only cost us about $1350, which included two hotel stays ($437). We were entertained the whole time and the kids had fun. 

I make these posts after our trips to share that you can explore different places, give your kids exposure to lots of things, and it doesn’t need to cost a lot of money. I see so many people save all year to splurge on one trip (e.g., Disney), when there’s a lot of learning experiences out there for little growing minds. I understand everyone has their own preferences, and if it works for you, that’s great! I just want to share another perspective of how we manage our trips and activities.

NEW JERSEY: PARKS

We left NY on a Monday morning. We explored northern Jersey for the day. Honestly, we could have spent more time in each place. I was surprised at how early we made it to a hotel.

Our first stop was the Palisades. While some parts of it were nice to see, it was overall disappointing. The park also requires payment to park in the parking lots instead of an access payment, and that was a surprise from all of our travels.

Stop two was Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park. The kids love to get their junior ranger badgers from the National Park Service, so that kept us entertained for a while. They give you a booklet and ask the kid to fill out a few pages to earn the badge. This one had a bingo game where you walked the park to find the images in the pictures and cross them off. Even the littlest one got into it. While the park and the huge waterfall was cool to see, I wouldn’t recommend spending much time in the area.

Stop three was Liberty Park. While I didn’t care to go to the Statue of Liberty itself, it was nice to show the kids it. We spent a while at the huge playground there, got some Mister Softee (my personal favorite), walked the waterfront trail, and drove around the park. We didn’t rush being there, but we were also cognizant of heading south before NYC rush hour started.

We stayed in Cranbury, NJ for the night. The hotel was outdated with a bunch of deferred maintenance, but they had an evening social hour that we were able to get a snack at. We hung out in the lobby and played card games.

NEW JERSEY: TRENTON

The next morning we had a tour scheduled at the Capitol in Trenton, which is why we had stayed in Cranbury (to be close, but not too close because #trenton). Mr. ODA booked a 10:00 tour. They were adamant that a tour had to be booked. He was given general instruction that he, logically, thought would be obvious when we got there. It wasn’t.

The first stop is to enter the parking garage under the Capitol. There’s a police officer sitting on the street and one sitting in the middle of the entrance area (not welcoming – giving “this isn’t safe” vibes). I pull up to the gate, and the man asks what we’re doing. I said we have a 10:00 Capitol tour. He seemed put off by us, but I think it was just his general demeanor. He then gave a bajillion instructions on where to go. Let me say what he should have: You’re on the 3rd floor. Go to the 1st floor. Park in visitor parking in section 1F. Do not go to the elevators near 1F. Go to the elevators at 1C.

The elevators are extremely important.

When Mr. ODA got the instructions over the phone, the lady said “do not go outside.” Out of context, that makes no sense. Turns out, behind all these instructions was a simple fact: the welcome center is your destination, not the Capitol security entrance. That is so unbelievably important. And yet, no one could clearly communicate that.

We got on the elevator at 1F. We followed the instructions that were printed and taped to the wall (so seemingly an important update because it required extra signage to be printed) to go straight to security at the entrance. We walked outside. Followed signs to the entrance. The lady at the security guard desk called the tour people to say we were there. It was 9:49.

Now, here, the security guard could have said, “it’s better if you go back to the welcome center and meet the tour there.” But nooooooo. She said “hang out in the vestibule. Do not go outside. She will come get you.” No one came at 10 for us. We kept asking what the plan was while we sat in a muggy vestibule with 3 small kids. “They’re coming.”

Turns out, there’s a welcome center. Turns out, the tour starts there. Turns out, they were going to get to us when they got to us and there was no rush.

So many failures on that part.

Then we take the tour. There are police officers everywhere, and always more than one. A buddy system. Inside a Capitol building. All over the building. That’s new to us. And we’ve been to a lot of Capitols. The tour wasn’t great. I tried really hard to ask myself questions like, “I grew up in NY, is this not good because I already just don’t like NJ?” and “I had to wait 22 minutes for our tour to start because of terrible communication and signage, am I just angry about that, or does this really suck?” It was bad. There was nothing all that noteworthy to NJ’s history to share. The tour guide told us twice that Abraham Lincoln walked the halls for one day on his way back to DC. One day. This story came up twice. Wow.

At the end of the tour, we’re escorted directly into the parking garage. Ummm, I have 3 kids who likely should pee even if they don’t say they need to go, and I need to pee. The tour guide escorted us back into the building, then stood outside the bathrooms while we went, and it wasn’t until we finally said “there are 3 cops here, do you still need to be here or can we look at the WELCOME center?” that he finally got permission from the cops that he could leave.

It was just a surprisingly terrible experience all around. We didn’t feel welcomed at any point. I’ve never visited a Capitol that made you feel like it wasn’t safe around every corner and that didn’t say “go ahead and explore the building” after the tour.

We were going to explore Trenton, but at that point, we just wanted out.

NEW JERSEY: THE SHORE AND CAPE MAY

We headed south through the Pine Barrens for a scenic drive and arrived at the Cape May Zoo. That was incredible and free. There was also a gigantic playground there, but it was hot, and I was ready to move on, but in case anyone has plans to be in southern Jersey – plan a day at the zoo and park. The food in the zoo was expensive, but I justified it that we hadn’t paid to enter the place.

From there, we drove over to Wildwood. Mr. ODA and I played ultimate frisbee for multiple summers on the beach there. It was a cool experience, and I wanted to do it with my kids. Originally, I had planned to pick a hotel we had once stayed in. I figured we’d walk the boardwalk, get dinner at one of the diner type places, and then just swim in the pool at the hotel. Well, the weather had other plans. Severe storms were descending on us. We grabbed the picture of the kids in front of the Wildwood sign and decided we didn’t want to ride out the storms in the little motels, so we booked the last ferry out of Cape May.

We grabbed some McDonalds just before the ferry. Since our ferry was at 6:00, we arrived around 5:15. There’s free putt putt and a playground there while you wait, but the putt putt had closed at 5 (I was also happy that my kids were not going to be holding a metal stick with lightning strikes nearby). We drove onto the ferry just before the rain started. As we’re waiting for the final loading of the cars and people, everyone’s phones start alerting to a tornado warning. The captain had tried to pull out and get through the storm, but he ended up saying we were going to ride it out back at the dock. We stayed awkwardly near the dock but not actually docked through the worst of it. A tornado came onshore right near the ferry terminal while we were sitting still at the dock, but the rain and wind was so bad, I didn’t get to see it with my own eyes! By 6:22, we were on our way to Lewes, Delaware.

SUMMARY

Look, I hate to make a part 3 on this, but I’m tired. The Capitol tour was so egregiously bad that this post got longer than I thought it would. So here’s the update for the two days in NJ, and next week I’ll finish up our Delaware activities. For a hotel, food, and gas, we spent $315 while in NJ plus $63 for the ferry.

Big Summer Trip: Part 1

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We took a 17 day trip, and it went much better than I thought it would. There wasn’t any reason it would go poorly, but we’re managing 3 kids and a really long time away from home, so I was reasonably worried. We usually go to NY to visit my family each summer. It’s an easy time to get there for a solid week and make the 12-14 hour drive worth it. This year, I decided I was finally up for the adventure of visiting Mr. ODA’s friend in Delaware too, so we locked it in.

TRAVEL TO NEW YORK

My niece was getting baptized and turning 1. My sister had planned a few options for her baptism, but there were some snafus, and it ended up working out that she could plan both events on one day. It just so happened that these events fell the week before a family wedding in NY as well, so it solidified our travel plans without much effort. The only problem was that the two older kids were in camp until 5 every day the week before. So we needed to get from Central KY at 5 pm on Friday to Long Island by 12 pm on Saturday. No traffic, no incidents creating longer stops out of the car, etc. and it’ll take 12 hours to get there. And that it did.

We picked the kids up at about 4:45 pm. We drove a few hours until it was time for dinner. We made a quick stop for food and then drove until 9:30 when we stopped for gas and got the kids situated for sleeping in the car. I was worried it wouldn’t go well because there’s a history of kids crying because they can’t move freely once falling asleep, but they made it the whole night. I was very happy and impressed. Mr. ODA drove from then until just after 2:30 am. I probably got an hour of sleep that whole stretch. Then I took over and we pulled into my dad’s house at 4:45 am. I was worried about getting there before the sun came up so that the kids wouldn’t think it’s day time and would go back to sleep, and we were cutting it close. I put the two big kids in a room with it fully blacked out and then I slept with the youngest in a twin bed to make sure he understood the assignment. He struggled, and we had light peeking in at 6:15, but we got back to sleep until 9:20.

NEW YORK ADVENTURES

Baptism and first birthday party took the whole first day, and the kids actually did pretty well considering the lack of sleep. Then we spent the rest of the week either in my dad’s pool or at a beach, except for the one night we went to a wedding. We traveled to Fire Island for a day to visit family friends. My dad has ferry tickets from his days working on the island, so that didn’t cost us anything, and we just paid for parking. The family that is there vacationing offered us lunch, so there weren’t any costs for being there.

While in NY, our costs are usually minimal because we stay at my dad’s, and the goal is to just be around family, so there aren’t huge expenditures. Our total spent in NY was $400. Just under $100 was gas, and $25 went towards EZ Pass (who knew that starting our EZ Pass journey in NY when we lived in Albany would pay off for so long because now we have a NY-issued pass that gets us discounts for traveling over NYC bridges).

Our biggest expense was the night that Mr. ODA and I went out for dinner in a waterfront town. We had dinner and drinks and spent a whopping $135. It’s super out of character for us, but, on that note, it’s also nice to spend time just the two of us, which is rare. My dad and his girlfriend took the kids for the night. They had the time of their life! I was really nervous, but it was totally worth it for them, even if they didn’t get home until nearly 10 pm! I love that they have those memories.

We didn’t make it to NYC. We had planned to be in NY for a couple more days than we ended up doing. We also didn’t plan to have so many activities while we were there. Being that the first two days were significantly busier than I anticipated after a night of overnight travel, I wanted that Monday to be more relaxing on the kids and not so stimulating. Then we planned to go to Fire Island on Thursday, and I was worried about dragging them through NYC and all that walking instead of resting. As Mr. ODA started mapping out a plan, it seemed the costs were going to be higher than he thought. So between the cost and the anticipated kid behavior, we didn’t end up making it there.

TRAVEL TO NEW JERSEY

For the second phase of the trip, we spent two days in NJ and then moved on to Delaware. We had originally planned to be in NY until we went to Delaware on that Wednesday, but Mr. ODA thought we could use the opportunity to explore some areas we typically wouldn’t. Usually we’re just trying to get home, which takes a whole day, so we don’t make stops near NY. It was definitely worth it, but that’s a story for the next post.

SUMMARY

The whole trip only cost us $1350, which included two hotel stays. We were entertained the whole time and the kids had fun. All the time in the pool ended up giving the kids some new skills. The littlest one started swimming independently. The two bigger ones grew so comfortable that they started working on dives and flips into the pool. They also were diving for things at the bottom of the pool, which was fun to watch, and not something they felt comfortable doing in the past. It may be time for us to invest in our own pool. 😉

July Financial Update

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We’ve been on a 2+ week trip, so I didn’t get around to this update. The financials are mostly updated, but I didn’t seek out a lot of details in the investment side to change those. The investments are down from the last update. We had quite a few “big ticket” items purchased for rentals over the last month, and we traveled, which added to our spending.

RENTALS

We’ve having more and more late payments with rent. We had one house have several issues and she texted nearly everyday. We have another house that didn’t pay June rent until July 5th, and when asked if she had a day she’ll pay, she said, “yes.” That’s like someone asking if they know the time and you respond yes. Is that the intent? Can you extrapolate the need for information? When Mr. ODA pushed, she said “well I just paid rent with my pay check, so this pay check had to go to other bills.” Having a roof over your head should be a priority. Another house paid $1150 out of $1400, but then didn’t pay the final bit so I did enforce the late fee on her, but I cut it in half. Another house pays twice per month because of their history of not paying for a long time, and so then they’ve now paid two late fees this month since each payment was late. At least I have them talking and letting me know when to expect rent.

One house wanted the side yard cleaned up. It’s always had trees in it, but the house next door sold and put up a fence. So it was more clear what was their property and they wanted space for the kids. I said I’d contact someone, but it was nearly impossible to get someone out for the job. He finally looked into doing it himself and I agreed they could pay half rent for that effort.

Another house had the stove go out and the toilet needed a new piece. The stove arrived dented, so we had to get it re-delivered. Another house had the HVAC go out, so that was a service call.

Another house had a compressor failure in their HVAC. We plan to sell this house, so we went for half the cost for the fix, but that was still $3,500.

I paid two home insurance bills. These houses aren’t escrowed, so they fall on me to manage, which is actually my preference.

PERSONAL

We registered for fall sports, which isn’t a small penny of a process. Our oldest is going to try out soccer. We’ve had 2 failed attempted when he was really little, but he’s been playing at recess for 2 years and seems to have grown a [slightly] thicker skin. Mr. ODA and I have played against him in the yard a bit, and we’re impressed by his ability to block the opposition, so maybe it’ll actually work out. Side note – he’s a really strong swimmer and treader of water. Someone last week said he could do water polo and a lightbulb went off. He probably would really enjoy that! Well, we live in the middle of the country and that’s not a thing (although I don’t get why because it requires a pool and not an ocean).

Our final payment for the cruise in October was due mid-July. As long as you don’t make final payment, they’ll adjust the price. We had a huge adjustment back in the black Friday sale timeframe, but I was holding out for even a little more. So I made the payment at the last possible moment, but that was a huge chunk added to the credit card.

School is just around the corner. Luckily we have family who buys clothes for our kids year round, so there isn’t a major “back to school” clothing shopping experience in our home. I need to buy a few supplies, but that needs to wait until next week when I can inventory what I purchased last year. I bought in bulk last year for two reasons: 1) if the teachers needed more supplies during the school year, I could just throw them in a backpack; and 2) supplies don’t expire, so I’d be ahead of the game for this year. It just requires me to know what’s there and what is still needed. Open house is the first week of August, so that’s my deadline. We do have everyone’s backpacks and lunch boxes ready at least.

NET WORTH

The market went down this past month, which is where the difference is in our net worth. We also increased our credit card balances a bit with the rental work needed. So the net is slightly lower than last month, but much higher than where we were a year ago. That’s the perspective I keep because the month-to-month fluctuation doesn’t matter that much.

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.