School Supplies

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I have heard many comments about the cost of school supplies, and someone just said to me they spent $400 on two kids’ supplies in elementary school. I spent $140, and this included all the wish list items for two teachers. Pause. According to our school district, teachers can’t put things like paper and tissues on the supply list, but they can have a wish list. I assume it’s because the implication is that everyone is expected to purchase all the supplies, but a wish list gives relief. I don’t actually know. I also note that when something is on one wish list, it’s on another supply list. Even looking at other school lists now, they’re all over the place. But have you ever been in a Kindergarten classroom? I’ll supply a years worth of paper towels, tissues, and hand sanitizer. Let’s not forget that while the district is telling the teachers they can’t ask for these basics, they’re also not supplying it because we’ve had several years of poor budget management and just had to take a loan to pay summer salaries. I digress; let’s get back on track.

I shopped Target, Walmart, Office Depot, and Amazon. Amazon is actually awful in this area. I need 3 erasers, not 60. Target was working really hard to be competitive, but Walmart won out by a few cents each time (I’m also a Walmart+ member, so my preference is buying there). Last year, Office Depot ran a sale in June that was incredible, but we were so busy that I didn’t think about supplies. Their prices were fine at the end of July, but they were slightly higher than the rest.

So my main order was $84.97 from Walmart. Then I had to order two packages of white cardstock and a wireless mouse through Amazon, which totaled $22. My second needed a new backpack, which was $33. Here are items we are reusing from last year.

  • This is actually the thing I was most proud of: Ticonderoga pencils. I bought a 96 count of unsharpened pencils last year for $11 (they’re $11.87 this year) (DO NOT SEND UNSHARPENED PENCILS). I sat one night, watching tv, and sharpened them myself. If you purchase a 12 pack of these pencils already sharpened, you will pay more than double per pencil than what I paid. Everyone sees a 12 pack or 2 12 packs are requested, and that’s just what you purchase. If you stop and think, you’ll see that those few dollars will make a difference. So I purchased these last year, sent in what was requested at the beginning of the year, sent in what was requested for this year, and I still have 24 pencils waiting for the next request.
  • We plan to reuse the pencil boxes from last year, but my mother in law has mentioned she’s getting them new ones. She puts their name on them with Cricut. I said let’s just fix the name on the ones they have, but she had already purchased them. This is $1 I didn’t spend (they’re $0.49 at Walmart).
  • Each child needs a plastic blue folder and a plastic red folder. They’re plastic and don’t leave the classroom, so after one year, they’re still in excellent condition. This wasn’t about the money, as this saved me $0.92.
  • Last year, I bought a giant pack of glue sticks. I figured as teachers asked for supplies during the year, I could easily grab and send in. No one ever asked for glue! I was able to provide all requested glue sticks for this year from the left overs. I needed 24 sticks; Target has a 30 pack for $7.49 right now.
  • We are reusing the headphones they used last year. My son has had the same ones since K and is going into 2nd. Sure, there may be a time that they die and I need to replace them, but there’s no reason to purchase new every year if they’re working. Target has wired headphones for $5. Now here, when I first purchased them, I went cheap because my thought was, “surely these will get broken and I’ll be replacing them constantly, so I’ll stick to $5 for now.” Well, they’re about to enter their 3rd year.
  • We are reusing my son’s wireless mouse. My daughter didn’t need one last year, so I had to purchase her one. I spent $10. Pro tip: I added the battery to it before I put it in her supply bag; don’t make the teachers add batteries to everyone’s on the first day. 🙂
  • In the November of last year, my third got into preschool where he was wait listed. Instead of buying him a new backpack, I handed my oldest’s Paw Patrol backpack to him and my oldest got a new one. I purposely had him pick a JanSport because they last. I also purposely had him pick a neutral of some sort so that it’s not a fad that he’ll want to replace in a year. Long story, but he wanted black and that wasn’t unexpected. My daughter picked a $17 clearance backpack at Kohl’s. It was purple and sparkly, and it was so her. We didn’t go shopping for a backpack at the time, but she saw it and wanted it, so I let it happen. Well, it was $17 for a reason, and it barely made it through the school year. I pre-picked 4 or 5 JanSport options during a Target 40% off sale and she picked a pretty, neutral (black with small pink bows) option. With the sale, it came to $33. Again, great that it’s on sale, but the point is that I’m also making an investment in something that’s going to make it through many years, so I would have paid full price if I hadn’t caught the sale.

All in all, had I purchased everything, even down to another backpack, my total would have been $230. And that includes substantial wish list items (e.g., ziploc bags of all sizes, paper towels, tissues, hand sanitizer, all kinds of printer paper and cardstock). I purchased name brand where it was requested – Crayola, Ticonderoga, Elmers, Expo.

Circling back to what made this post idea: I looked up this one person’s supply list. It is about half the size of what I was asked to provide, and I would have spent $39. If I add the wish list items in, it would have been another $36.

People are quick to complain about the cost of things, but they’re not willing to take the time to stop and think. Did you purchase out of convenience? Did you buy name brands where the brand probably doesn’t matter (e.g., a Ziploc sandwich bag doesn’t work any differently or better than a Great Value zipper sandwich bag)? Did you purchase things because it’s on the list without considering reusing items? Did you purchase things that you already have in the house that are adding clutter?

So, if you’re reading this, please realize you have more control than you think.

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.

“Rich”

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There’s a lot of chatter online these days about a “90s summer.” I’ve also been fed some reels about what “rich” looks like, and it’s not about money or flashing the perception of money. Mr. ODA and I are working very few hours these days. My job is because I’m a “helper” in life, and I know this group needs my help for a bit longer (I also tried to quit and they said no). Mr. ODA’s job is to qualify for health insurance so we save about $1500 per month in direct expenses for health insurance.

When I first started working, my goal was to climb the ladder. I wanted to be the youngest CFO in my Federal agency. Then a 34 year old woman got the job and crushed my dreams a bit, but I was still a good amount younger than her, so I just needed her to move on in the next few years. Then I went to DC. I left the house between 5:30 am and 6 am, and I got home between 4:30 and 5:30. I kept looking around thinking, “when would I see my kids if I had them?” In fact, we were denied adopting a dog because we both had full time jobs. That still fascinates me. During my fight to climb the ladder in DC, I realized that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to live a few miles from work where I could have more free time. I wanted to own a little piece of the pie, so to speak (my job in DC was very high level, but I loved working with the State level where I could actually see the road and bridge projects I approved in progress). But even as I made that transition, it didn’t feel right. I wanted to be home with the kid I was about to spend $30k to have. I didn’t want to put all that money into making a baby for him to sit in daycare for a whole work day and commute time (I get it – it works for people, but not for me).

FIRE. Financial independence, retire early.

While our path didn’t go as we expected as we learned more, and we both worked longer than we intended, the goal was always the same – be home with our family while they’re little. And that’s what we have. Even when I took this new job, I said my kids come first. I didn’t sacrifice in all those ways before kids, give myself freedom, and then take on a full time job. Most people struggle to understand that. Even the agents who I’m paying $600k each year can’t understand when they hear I don’t “need” to work.

So that’s my rich. I’m at the kids’ school all the time. I’m at nearly every drop off and pick up. Heck, I discharged from the hospital AMA so that I could get to a baseball game in May. I will be there. I will be cheering them on. I will lay in bed at bed time, read them books, and then ask them about their day while they tell me the most obscure things…but it’s because they just want to fill that time where they get to talk to me without a sibling interrupting.

I’m not driving a fancy car. I’m not living in a 7000 sf house just because I can. We’re not going out for drinks and sitting at restaurants multiple times per week. We’re not going to the movies every month (umm, actually, or ever, unless it’s the $2 summer flicks series). I’m making my money work for me, so that I can focus on pouring into my kids and enjoying the time of their lives that they actually want to be around me all the time.

Disclaimer: I am not personally making my money do anything. That’s all Mr. ODA. I’m just the bookkeeper, collecting rent and tracking what’s happening and trusting he has the answers on how to move the money around.

Fall Creek Falls

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We took a trip in June to Fall Creek Falls in TN. We had looked into it a couple of years ago, but it was hard to find things to do and places to stay. This year, less people were planning to go, we have a big trip as a family planned later this year, and so we went for it. It was a nice relaxing trip.

The grandparents graciously pay for the lodging when we do family trips. We had a nice big cabin for 12 of us. We purchased food to eat at the cabin, which was really the only option because there was hardly anything for 25 miles. The first day, we went hiking and swimming in waterfalls around the park. It was supposed to rain all day, but we made it out only getting rained on towards the end of the last hike for a little bit. The next day, we hung out for the morning, went to rent some canoes ($10 for one hour), found a swimming hole, and then some of us went hiking a bit more.

I usually do trip summaries when we get back so we remember what we did and share how much we spent. In this case, we spent about $40 on gas, about $20 on meals during our travel, and about $50 on groceries. With that, it’s hard to accurately portray what we spent because it’s not the full picture since we didn’t pay for lodging. But I’m making it down that we went on a trip for 3 nights that was nice and relaxing!

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.

Camping Trip

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We have a summer full of trips planned, and stop 1 was camping. We took the kids camping in the fall, and they didn’t stop talking about it for weeks. It was a purposefully quick trip to be able to gauge how it went. We got there in the evening, just before dark. In the morning, we packed everything up and then went for a hike. The consensus was that we needed two nights because they wanted more time to enjoy the camp site.

We planned a two night trip to Zilpo Campground in the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. The reservation for the campground cost us $70.62. We drove there, but that gas usage was nominal. We put a lot of time and effort into planning the meals for that duration, so that cost us about $20.

We stayed in Loop H, which is a place we had stayed before. I love how tree covered the entire loop is. Our site was H17. There was a path down to the water, and the kids enjoyed swimming there. There’s a beach area at the campground, where we spent a few hours. We did a hike off Deer Loop. And we roasted lots of marshmallows!

We planned the trip a few weeks ago, so we obviously didn’t know how the weather would turn out. It rained for a bit on the last morning, but hardly any of our things got wet thanks to the tree cover. The unfortunate part was that a humid wave came into town just for the time that we were camping. The week before or after, and we would have had a nice high 70s day with low 60s nights. Instead, we had highs in the 90s and lows barely breaking below 80.

A simple post for a simple trip. 🙂 Not to mention, we got away from home for 2 nights and spent less than $100!

$1 million 401k before age 40!

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Mr. ODA’s retirement account surpassed $1 million last month!

Mr. ODA and I worked for the federal government. Our retirement account is called the Thrift Savings Plan, but it’s essentially a 401k, and includes a 5% salary match on contributions. My parents were adamant that I put at least the amount in to get the full match, and to increase my contributions as I received raises. Mr. ODA entered into my life and said I was to max it out no matter what, and so I did. The point here being he’s maxed it out from the beginning. I worked for about 11.5 years, and he worked for about 16 years. My last contribution was May 2019, and his last contribution was October 2025.

I share this background to make the point about compound growth. The max I could have contributed over my working time was about $190k. The max Mr. ODA could contribute was about $305,000. So that means that based on $305,000 of his own money, he now has a valuation of over $1 million.

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.