Monthly Financial Update

December Financial Update

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We are 2 months without Mr. ODA’s pay check. I honestly haven’t noticed because my day to day is just managing how much is coming in against how much is going out. My concern is the net I have for this year is $30k less than what Mr. ODA brought in. We’re adding nearly $2k per month for insurance costs, so that net difference is $42k. That’s a gap we’re going to need to focus on here shortly. I should note that our spending includes rental work that we pay out, and we had some major purchases in there (e.g., roof, HVAC). I could say I hope that our investments in the rentals will be less next year, but we seem to track the same expense totals each year.

End of year means I need to get my spreadsheet organized. I need to make sure all expenses are logged, that all logged expenses have receipts and documentation to support them, and that all our maintenance actions are logged in my maintenance sheet. The maintenance sheet is what I use to check back easily on what work we’ve done on each house. I was taking too much time trying to remember which house we replaced things in, so now I have this sheet that I can pull up and easily say, “I just replaced a valve in that toilet 4 months ago; this isn’t normal wear and tear.”

RENTALS

The 5th was a Friday, so you know what that means – I didn’t see most of our rent until then. After the 5th was over, I was short 25% of our rental income. That is fascinating to me. Everyone had told me what their plan was, but I can’t fabricate money where there isn’t any. I have a tenant that is using a program to pay partial payments throughout the month. I can’t stand it. It ensures I get my money at the “beginning” of the month, while it puts them on a payment plan. However, they have the payment set as the 5th, and then it doesn’t clear and hit my account until about the 12th. I’ve expressed my frustration that this has gone on for several months instead of it being a one or two month stopgap, but nothing is changing.

We got our new townhome rented right before Thanksgiving. That was helpful and a literal last minute prayer that was answered in a crazy fashion. She’s been in for 3 weeks now, and I haven’t heard anything.

I had a tenant inform me that she’s hit rough times and wants to be released from her lease. I was really hopeful for a calmer month, but I need to reset my expectations. 14 rental properties and 12 months out of the year = there probably won’t be a month where nothing comes up. The good news is that we can likely get it turned over and a new person in there for market rent. She’s currently paying $975, and we’re looking for about $1300 going forward. Because she always pays and I knew her financial situation, I’ve always held back on her increases. There was another $25-50 increase coming this year, but it still wouldn’t have made up the increases in carrying costs over the years.

PERSONAL

We’ve just been so busy that we’re not really spending that much. Most of our spending is for regular purchases. We had a huge purchase hit our credit card, but that was split among our family for the purchase of new phones. I did all my Christmas shopping in the last month, so that’s higher than usual spending on the cards, but overall still pretty low.

NET WORTH

I got a new phone number and updated all my accounts before my old number was deactivated (lovely two factor authentication). One of my accounts (401k) updated my phone number, but that apparently didn’t correlate to updated the number associated with two factor authentication – ugh. I need to address that, and for the time being, that’s just a placeholder number that I guessed based on Mr. ODA’s 401k increase over the last month.

November Financial Update

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Another month, and another delayed post while I juggle life. These numbers are mostly based on last Wednesday’s market close. I had big intentions of writing this on Thursday last week.

RENTALS

Our rental that we purchased a month ago is still vacant. It’s a commercial loan, so the first payment was just made on it yesterday. It always hurts to pay those bills without income. I’ve spent some time cleaning it. It looked fine if you just did a quick glance. But the details were terrible. I wiped down all the walls in the house and all the outlets and switch plates, which were extremely necessary. I wiped the baseboards with their first clean using the mop, but I’ll need to go back and do a wipe with something that gets directly on it. We were excited that the house didn’t need painted, but the closets are a bit of a mess. If I decide to make the time, I’ll throw some fresh paint on some parts. The bathrooms were pretty bad, and they’re about 70% done being cleaned. Maintenance wise, we just needed to replace a missing cabinet door pull, clean out the air return vent, and do a few random small fixes with caulk and screws. I’ve shown in several times. I even had a lease drawn up for one person, but it fell through.

We’ve had issues with our two new tenants getting their utilities in their name. We had one in Virginia who claimed she tried to get the water bill in her name and it just wasn’t happening. She always paid the day I sent the bill to her, so I just let it go. This past month was terrible. It took her over a month to get it paid, and I threatened to turn it off so that it would force her to get it in her name and keep me (and my property manager) out of it. One in Lexington was annoying that she didn’t get it done, and she’s not very communicative. Then the other in Winchester had to go in person to get the water in her name, so that wasn’t surprising that it took a while.

PERSONAL

Our 3rd kid got off the waitlist for preschool! Our beloved preschool closed down last year. Everyone flocked to this other preschool. I followed the “rules” and did things “ethically,” but we got waitlisted. Long story. I wasn’t pushing for him to be in preschool in the 2s year (he’ll be 3 next week, but our age cut off here is August 1st). I figured I’d push really hard in the next couple of months to make sure he got a spot for next year. This place I want him to go to has a lot more spots for 3 year olds than 2 year olds, so I had high expectations we’d get a spot next year. Well, we got the email a couple of weeks ago that there was room available for him! It’s a longer day than we’re used to, but he’s so excited to go to school. He asks to go to the playground daily, so that’s going to be nice that he’ll have TWO playground times twice a week. I can’t wait to hear all his stories.

My work schedule has me in the office for half a day on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. We’re going to look into adjusting that in January to account for the days he’s in school so that I can actually enjoy some kid free (guilt free…no strict schedules and babysitter availability) time since 2018.

We paid off the 0% interest card that was sitting at $14,000. It didn’t bother me to have that balance sitting there because it was for a good reason, but it sure does feel good to have that off our plate. Our spending has been relatively low the last few months. This month will see a small spike because I have’t preemptively bought any Christmas gifts, so that will likely be a large purchase amount later this week. We’re also in the market for camping gear since we took the kids camping this past weekend and noted a few gaps in our equipment.

SUMMARY

We’re up $1.5 million from 2 years ago, which is a cool number to see. Considering we paid off large credit card balances, I’m surprised our net worth only went up about $5k since last month. I updated the value of the houses in the past few weeks, so that’s where the hit is. Home values are expected to go down in the Fall, so I like to capture that adjustment from the higher values that appear in the Spring. Our cash value obviously went down since it went towards credit card payments and a down payment on a house (except it only decreased by $11k).

October Financial Update

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We had two tenants move out at the end of July. We also had back to back trips scheduled for the end of July and beginning of August, with the kids starting school on the 13th. We also had the cruise planned for the end of September into October, so that was a decent push to get the rentals rented before we left. We put countless hours into those two houses and it definitely took its toll.

RENTALS

As of October 1st all our rentals are rented! That’s a good feeling after two months of vacancy. This is the month of taxes. We have several houses that are paid off, which means they aren’t escrowed, and I’m responsible for paying the taxes and insurance on them. The 4 houses we have in KY are owed this month, and it’s about $7k worth. We’ll owe 2 houses in VA that come to about $3k next month.

I have a couple of houses that are struggling to pay rent on time. Usually it happens for a couple of months and they get back on track, but that’s not happening quickly. I’m trying to remain optimistic, but there isn’t a track record of it getting easier if they have taken this long needing to catch up.

We closed on a new property near our house. It’s a townhouse that we hope to get rented later this month. We’ll see what it looks like once it’s empty, but it didn’t appear we’ll need to do anything to it to get it rented (which is how we buy our rentals). There will be separate posts going into the details of each rental turnover and the purchase of House15 using a commercial loan.

PERSONAL

This is the last month for the 0% interest credit card. When we have a major purchase on the horizon (it was house-wide carpet this time last year), we open a 0% interest credit card. We started this concept about 8 years ago. We look for a credit card that has 0% interest for at least 12 months and that gives us a bonus of some sort. We make more than the minimum payment each month and then pay it off before the deadline. A default payment can cause you to lose your 0%, so it’s important you’re making your payments. But we don’t pay a lot towards it because the money is doing more for us in our savings account (or the investments) than it would by paying down a 0% interest balance. This time around was a bit different. The carpet only cost us $10k, but the balance is over $14k. This credit card had the same incentive as our typically used card (2% cash back), so Mr. ODA used it a majority of the time. For a while, my goal was just to pay what gets our balance lower than the original balance from the carpet. But then we had some big rental purchases that we put on the card, and it just wasn’t worth paying $5k+ to the card. We will make a transfer from our big savings account to make that payment at the end of the month.

Mr. ODA’s last pay check arrived on October 11. He took the “deferred resignation program” as of April 30. The sunset date was September 30, so that covered the payout that we just received, including his balance of annual leave.

Outside of rentals, our spending has been minimal. With the cruise, we didn’t spend much since that was a week of almost everything paid for in advance. The dog had his annual check up, so he was the bulk of our costs. We have our routine costs we see, but happy to see lower balances after all the rental work costs.

SUMMARY

I don’t even want to admit what is about to leave our account this month. I guess the positive is that it’s under $100k..? We have to pay the taxes on the houses that aren’t escrowed, pay off that credit card, and buy a house. At least the house purchase goes right towards equity. Since I didn’t get all the account numbers yesterday morning like I planned, here’s an update that captures our new purchase.

September Financial Update

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Let’s start with a win – we hit $5 million net worth!

It has been a month. Goodness. Two rentals to turn over and just … life.

That’s where I left this post on September 17. It’s currently October 6, so I’m going to just call it good and post. We had two rentals to turnover and get rented before we went on a trip, which we did accomplish, but it was exhausting. I’ll elaborate in future posts on what went into everything there. For now, I’m posting this back dated to September so that we have it for future reference, especially because it was a milestone month. Look for October’s post soon, as well as updates to the rentals (including a new one!).

August Financial Update

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This month was unbelievably painful financially. And yet, I appreciate that we’ve set ourselves up that we can handle these things without stress, even though the balances on credit cards made me feel like I was drowning. At one point, we had over $30k on credit cards. I’m still juggling life as a mom, financial consultant, part time worker, and volunteer on the HOA board. Oh, and managing two vacant rental turnovers, throw in 2 trips away from home, and school starting.

RENTALS

We had one house pay late, with little notice and communication (if you’ve been here, you know this is a pet peeve of mine). They paid the late fee at least. I had another house pay partial on the 3rd and then true up on the 6th. Again, no communication, and she beat me to asking what the deal is. I also had a tenant who already pays twice per month be late on both of this month’s payments, so that also brought in late fees.

In a story for another time, we have two vacant rentals. 11 of 13 houses renewed. Two houses each actually moved out of state, and unfortunately, my kind heart scheduled both of them to end their leases on July 31st. We’ve been spending all our time at these two houses. The one had smokers in it (against the lease) and we’re struggling with that. We’ve replaced the carpet and painted all the walls (except 2 closets and a powder bathroom) and it still smells funky when you walk in. Then there’s just the routine type turnover things like scrubbing and wiping dirty hand marks off the door frames. All of these things will be detailed in separate posts. The other vacant one was quite the story, so that’ll be multiple posts. Our attention isn’t as heavily on that one because we’re going to likely sell it instead of re-rent it.

We replaced a roof ($5500), replaced an HVAC ($8300, but split with a partner), evicted bats ($1480), and made decisions on flooring replacement in another house with extensive termite damage. Seriously. Financially painful. Coming this next month, we will also be paying for termite repairs at another house where we tore out carpet and laid LVP.

HEALTH COSTS

I tend to focus heavily on this topic in this blog. It’s surprising because it’s not really the niche of making money, but insurance and doctor bill processing seem to be wrong more than they’re right. Therefore, it falls more into “protect your money” than anything else.

This is a longer story for another post yet again, but the gist is that the insurance company took 6 months to process a claim. They sent me the bill in June. I called 3 weeks after the bill arrived to find out they had sent my balance to collections because their system flagged it as a January overdue balance…even though this was my first invoice on the matter. Love it.

The end result here is that we needed to add $1600 to the credit card.

PERSONAL

I don’t know that there’s much personal life happening with all those other things we’re managing. We took 2 trips. One didn’t cost us much because the grandparents take care of a lot of the cost, another one cost us more than usual because I put a lot of effort into food that we usually don’t do when we travel there. Overall, the trips were fairly inexpensive financially, but they took a toll on me due to the time commitment and what we had to give up by doing these trips.

Otherwise, we’ve just been wrapping up summer and starting school. We’re about to get back into baseball season with lots of practices.

NET WORTH

The market had a big jump last week and my update of financials occurred Thursday morning. Unfortunately, life put a blog post on the back burner while we were turning over a rental, so I’m only getting around to posting this now. The market is in a fairly similar spot as of yesterday’s close, and I’m thinking we’d even be over $5 million if I were to fully update our financial status right now. We’ll just hope for the best for next month.

In October, we’ll pay off our $15k credit card that we’re carrying, so that will be a big swing in our credit card balance two months from now. We need new windows at our house (the seal keeping in the gas between the panes is going on quite a few windows (or went years ago), and it creates this streaky dirty look to them), but I think I’ll appreciate not carrying this large credit card balance month to month while we utilize the $0 interest for a while.

July Financial Update

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

PERSONAL

My big news this month was handling my HOA’s annual meeting. We’ve been working so hard for the last year, and I tried really hard this year to increase communication between the Board and community. I think I did a good job because there wasn’t any contentious point of this meeting and there were very little questions. I received nice feedback on how I presented the budget and that I did a good job throughout the year. It was a welcomed win since there was a lot of heat in the previous couple of years.

The family’s big news is getting passports for a trip this Fall. The parents already have theirs, but we got the kids their pictures and submitted their application. So our credit card balance is higher than normal because we paid for flights and the cruise itself.

It took us until the last week of June to meet our deductible on our health insurance. It’s only $3,300, so that’s quite the impressive feat. I’d point out that my March surgery took until then to get processed correctly, but at least we eventually got there. I have very little faith that it’s all processed correctly though, so it’s on my to do list to verify that we’re not overpaying into that deductible, which they don’t make easy because they don’t show me prescription fills clearly.

We went on a trip for a long weekend to visit Mr. ODA’s aunt in WV. They have a vacation house there, so we didn’t pay for lodging. Unexpectedly, they provided all our meals. I bought them a gift card and some beer. So between that gift, gas, and the meals on either end of the trip, we spent about $200 for a trip, and it was one of the best vacations I’ve been on.

Two of the kids spent this past week at camps. One was 3 hours per day at a dance studio, and the other was 9.5 hours of all outdoor time for the week. He had a blast, and I’m kind of jealous that he got to play all those games and have a great week.

RENTALS

This month, I received an email from Rent App that a tenant was paying their rent. She didn’t give me a heads up, so I wanted to verify things with her. She said this app pays me in full, but it takes the first half of the payment from her account at the beginning of the month and then the second half of the payment in the middle of the month. They’ve lived with me for for 8 years, so I’m surprised she sought out this option instead of talking to me about a payment plan. The program was extremely sketchy and I didn’t feel good about a single step of it. I gave up the registration process at the point that it required untethered access to my phone, but I wish I would have followed my gut at the first personal information step, as if it wasn’t bad enough I had to give my bank account details for the transfer to happen. The payment eventually came through on the 10th, but I didn’t feel good about it.

Another tenant paid late with the late payment. And another tenant paid late with little to no communication and several follow up conversations. I can’t stand when I have to hunt down money. I’m willing to work with everyone who reaches out. She paid the first one with a (1/3), so clearly she knew the plan. And yet, on the 6th, I had to ask where the rest of the rent was. She said it would be done that day. A partial payment was made on the 7th. Then another partial payment on the 8th to finish it out.

We hired someone to clean out the gutters at two houses. Both houses are inundated with trees over the roof, so it’s something we need to stay on top of because they back up every 6 months. We could add gutter guards, but just didn’t see the point since we could do it. Now we don’t live there. He is also going to cut trees 10′ back from the roof on one of those houses.

And then the bats. One house had a bat show up last Monday. My property manager didn’t think much of it, so we didn’t do anything (I wasn’t even told about it at that point). Another bat showed up on Saturday. The tenant went for rabies shots and got boosters for her dogs. She then took a bat to get tested, which came back negative. She said she wasn’t comfortable staying there, so she stayed with a friend. We had traps set so bats could get out of the attic, but they couldn’t get back in. The pest people will go back next week to check on things.

We have two houses that will be vacant at the end of this month. We were supposed to have one at the end of June and one at the end of July, but the June one asked for an extension. I let them have it, but I’m not thrilled about my timing now. We won’t be able to truly get to work in there until mid-August, and it’s going to require a lot of work (not hard work, just time consuming). Then for the other one vacating at the end of the month, we don’t intend on renting it again. We’re going to let it sit over the winter and sell it in the spring.

NET WORTH

The way that I update our net worth each month involves overwriting the numbers from last year. So I can easily see that we’ve gained over half a million net worth since July 2024’s update. What’s nice about that is that it’s all appreciation, paying down mortgages, and the stock market with continued savings. We didn’t make any large financial moves that would have adjusted our net worth in one large move like buying a house. I had a conversation with someone about our net worth and goals recently. It would be nice to cross the $5 million threshold, but we’re not actively managing our funds in a way that will cause drastic swings outside of market movement. We crossed $4 million in March 2024.

We’re over $200k from last month’s update. Our credit cards are much higher than last month because of trip purchases and rental work that was unexpected, but needed. Here’s to the last month of summer.

June Financial Update

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

RENTALS

We had one that was supposed to leave at the end of June, but they asked for another month. So now we have two supposedly leaving at the end of July. I’ll believe it when I see it. Nothing they’ve done has indicated they’re excited about leaving and making progress towards finding another place (they’re both trying to move to another state).

I had another tenant ask to renew for two years. I agreed she could stay there, but we needed a slight increase in rent in year 2. This isn’t the first time I’ve done it that way.

We’re still chipping away at the termite infestation. Live termites running around when the shower got removed meant we had evidence that they’re not treating correctly. They did a major treatment of the house and said it will take 45 days to take effect. We’re leaving it for 60 days before tackling the damage under the living room. We cleaned out and laid a vapor barrier in the crawl space a couple of months ago. In the bathroom, we replaced the subfloor, replaced the stall shower, replaced the vanity, and laid LVP on the floor. The bathroom really needs to be painted now, but generally it’s in good shape. That cost us $3,710.

PERSONAL

We’re just managing the summer schedule. We’re not doing things that cost a lot of money outside of camp and our trips. The two little ones did a church camp this week, which was 3 nights for 2 hours each night, and totaled $40 for the two of them. The two big ones are doing separate camps in a couple of weeks. Then the middle one is doing a gymnastics camp in July. She was originally only scheduled to do that one, but a dance camp with some friends came up, so she’s doing that one for $100.

We haven’t done any trips yet. It just worked out that our trips are back to back at the end of the summer. It also means we’re going to miss both back to school activities, so I’m pretty bummed about that.

We’re still carrying a balance from our carpet replacement last Fall. We use that credit card regularly, so it isn’t as low as I would have liked to see. Typically we get a card for the bonuses, but it’s not worth using it because we have a 2% cash back card. But this one offers the same, so Mr. ODA uses it often. We’ll need to pay that off in October, which is also when Mr. ODA’s pay checks are expected to stop.

NET WORTH

I didn’t get a few numbers from Mr. ODA, so our actual net worth is probably slightly higher than this. The market has recovered a bit for us, so we’re continuing to increase our net worth from the month before (there was a dip there for a hot minute).

March Financial Update

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

NEW JOB

I was approached by someone I serve with on our HOA board. They were looking for a new person who has a financial background, was really organized, and could handle talking to people regularly. It appears that I made such an impression on him and his wife. I wasn’t ready to get back into the workforce. While I have enjoyed my temporary jobs I’ve done since I quit my career in May 2019, I always had a ‘sunset date’ on those activities. I knew that each job was only for a short period of time, and I’d get back to freedom/flexibility. This was a new territory they were asking of me – be on a set schedule and away from my kids.

I expressed that my need for entering back into the workforce was that I wanted to be part of my kid’s activities and I needed to work between school hours for the most part. They expressed a desire for me to work 30 hours, and that just wasn’t feasible. Based on what they told me about the tasks required of the job, I was able to come up with about 18 hours of work, knowing it would likely become 20 hours. So far, I’ve worked more than 20 hours each week as I’m learning, and things are not moving as quickly as I expected them to. I’m 2.5 weeks in, and at this point I can do all the main tasks. Where I’m struggling is the knowledge of all the “one off” transactions and how some people are treated a little differently than the standard.

Overall, I’ve been super grateful that Mr. ODA has given me the space I needed to get my feet under me these past couple of weeks, and I’m really enjoying learning these new tasks and being involved in this sector.

FEDERAL WORKERS

It’s been rough around here for almost two months now. While Mr. ODA is still employed, there is a daily concern that the news will come in. There’s no security like there used to be expected for a government position. The blows have become a bit more scattered than it being such a daily barrage, but there’s still uncertainty and daily updates and waiting for more information that’s occurring.

PRESCHOOL

Both old kids will be in regular school next year. Our youngest has a late-in-the-year birthday, so he wasn’t eligible for preschool until this coming school year even though he’s already 2. The preschool where both of the other two went to shut down. My middle is finishing out the year there, but next year, they sold the preschool concept off to a third party. The company that took over has terrible reviews, and everything about them screams ‘daycare.’ While people need daycares, and that’s fine, we don’t need that. I wanted a space that had a curriculum.

The school previously had a daily agenda and an expectation that the kids were there from 9 to 12. This new school has a come and go as you please set up, and they couldn’t provide me a break down of their daily schedule. The admissions person was actually quite rude and condescending to me, after taking 4 days to return my phone call. I’m not in a desperate need for our youngest to go anywhere, so I won’t be trying to enroll him there.

We had hoped to get into another preschool by our house, but the closure of our old school sent a mass exodus to the nearby preschools. I told Mr. ODA that I wanted to join their church so I could get 3 weeks ahead on signing up, but he said that wasn’t ethical and was more than just saying “I want to join your church.” So I didn’t. But several other families did. And they got in. And I’m still really sad about that. He’s waitlisted there, and there’s been no indication of hope that he’ll get off the waitlist.

I tried for a “moms day out” program, which would cover one or two days per week (I was looking for 2 days previously). He’s waitlisted there, but she gave me a glimmer of hope that even though they don’t have a lot of turnover, there is a chance a space opens up either right at the end of this school year or at the beginning of next school year.

I had originally ‘mourned’ the loss of my freedom with the preschool closing down. I have been at my kids’ beck and call for 7 years by the time our youngest would go to school. Even though it was only going to be 6 hours per week, I was excited to get things done that have been on my to do list for years and just run errands unencumbered. I’ve lessened my extreme feeling on that over time, but it still would be nice to have a few hours dedicated to me and my schedule at some point.

RENTALS: RENT RATE

I evaluated our current tenants and their rent rate back in December. I should have just written the letters at that point and been prepared for the deadlines, but I didn’t. So this week, I got those rent change letters prepared, printed, and mailed. We typically change the rent by $50 every two years for our long term tenants. That’s the approach we took here except for a couple that needed more catch up. One tenant has already responded and executed a change to increase their rent. I have 4 more out there waiting for the tenant to tell me they accept the adjustment or will be leaving at the end of their lease. I also have another tenant who will be staying another year, but I didn’t change their rate since I had changed it by $25 last year.

RENTALS: TERMITES

We have a house that we purchased with termite issues. We knew it going in. We had it treated, and then we fixed the really bad areas. We then didn’t get notification about an annual warranty payment they would do, so our coverage lapsed for a few years. We saw swarmer termites in one part of the house and called them back. They offered to let us backpay those missed warranty years, saving us about half the cost it would have been for a new treatment. Well, we’re paying for that now. For the last 4 years, they’ve checked the property once per year. They’ve noted termites actively being there with more damage, and they didn’t clearly communicate the concern of the condition until this month. We have major problems in the house. One wall in the laundry room is so bad that the termites ate the backing off the drywall and the drywall is all cracking off the wall because it’s not being held onto anything. It really hasn’t been fun, but I know we will be able to fix it. So far, we’ve had the crawl space cleaned out and relined with a vapor barrier, and some plumbing issues fixed that were creating a perfect moist condition for termites to gravitate to. We still have to rip up the carpet, fix the subfloor, lay LVP, rip out a shower insert, reinstall the insert, and get the shower operational after that. It’s a lot.

PERSONAL FINANCES

Mr. ODA reduced our monthly contributions to our investments. We were putting $3,000 per month in (3 separate $1,000 transactions), and now those have been reduced to $500 three-times per month. The kids still get $100 per month each into their UTMAs.

We’ve been so busy that we have hardly spent any money. Outside of insurance and medical payments, the only extra spending I’ve done is for our daughter’s birthday parties we’re having this month. I’ve bought some clothes since I’ve lost weight on my post-three-kids journey too. Usually, we’ve booked a trip by now, but we haven’t done that either. Overall our spending is lower than it has been.

NET WORTH

The market is well below where it has been, and all our numbers show it. We are over $189k lower than last month. I haven’t updated our property values yet. I’ll probably do that next month as the spring market ramps up.

February Financial Update

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PERSONAL

I’ve been busy getting started with a new job that should officially begin in the next couple of weeks. I’ve still subbed at the preschool a few days over the last month. I’ve been working on financial consulting work for a school in Virginia. I’ve also been trying to get our homeowners association documents in order while I execute a transition I initiated for a new management company, as well as getting the budget in order well before it’s presented to homeowners months after the start of our fiscal year. Anyway, laying all that out makes me realize I’ve juggled a bunch and have been pretty happy about all that activity going on.

In addition to what I’ve been juggling, Mr. ODA is a federal employee. So the current climate has been hanging over our heads. The uncertainty of what the future holds is more concerning than it has been in the past. Luckily, we’ve set ourselves up for success, but it still is hard to manage that we may not be in control of that decision.

RENTALS

We had multiple houses pay rent late this month, and I’m still working with another house that has been late for the last 3 months and isn’t fully caught up yet. We had one house break the screen door (claiming the wind grabbed it and slammed it against the railing), so we replaced that for $400 with labor. Another house had a faucet leaking and a door knob that wouldn’t twist. I also have to get out to a house here in KY that had lattice under the deck fall down. It’s supposed to rain all weekend, so I think I’ll head out there tomorrow and handle that before the rain this weekend.

NET WORTH

We recovered from last month’s slump, but we’re still slightly below December’s number. Other than the last two months, we’re still greater than any other net worth calculation we’ve had. Our investment accounts raised slightly, and our debt amounts decreased slightly. Both sections trending in a good direction. There were no major purchases or adjustments to our accounts this past month, and mostly our spending was fairly low.

January Financial Update

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

RENTALS

We have 13 rental properties. They were mostly purchased in 2016-2019, with one purchased in 2022. Most of them have sustained very little tenant turnover.

I had 4 houses not pay their full rent on time this month. As of this post, only 1 is still outstanding. They’ve had car troubles and have communicated regularly with me. While I’d prefer to see at least something paid towards rent by now, they’ve been with us for 8 years, and I know they’ll eventually be whole. They never take more than the month to get rent fully paid. Of the other 3 that were late, I only charged one a late fee. The others aren’t usual offenders and communicate up front, but this one has been more difficult to get rent paid from the time we purchased the house.

While looking back at last year’s January post, I must note that this past year has been fairly easy on the rental front. We’ve had a lot of frustrations and things to manage, but it hasn’t been as time consuming in the “people management” side of things. We had a few issues with a tenant that first moved in last winter, but they’ve been quiet since. We had 4 houses turnover tenants in 2024, with fairly little loss of rent.

PERSONAL

We have been battling snow for almost two weeks now, which is very unusual in Central KY. We’ve already taken the kids skiing twice this year. Even the baby got on skis! He’s 2, so I guess he isn’t such a baby anymore, but that’s the earliest we’ve put a kid on skis. He’ll slide down the mountain, but he doesn’t stand on the skis; he’s just squatting the whole way.

NET WORTH

Last year at this time, I was sharing that our goal was to reach $4 million. We were at $3.869 million.

Our net worth is about $66k less than last month. I don’t always update the value of our assets, so that’s a fairly static number. Everyone few months, I’ll check on the ‘zestimates’ though. Typically, we expect to see the total decrease in the winter months because there are less sales and less activity to raise the sale prices like you see in the Spring months. On top of that, all of our investment accounts (except one that increased by $22) decreased a bit.

We have a 0% interest credit card that has a balance over $12k on it. We also added a car payment, which we haven’t had since about 2015. Tesla was offering a 0% interest loan, so that monthly payment isn’t going away for nearly 5 years. Overall, our credit cards balances total more than $3k less than last month’s, which makes me happy to see.