HOA

September Financial Update

mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

I really thought I’d be more on top of managing our expenses and categorizing them this year, but it just didn’t pan out. Our spending is higher than I would like in the food category, but I just can’t seem to carve out time to manage that. I did put effort into a Kroger run. We shop Kroger and Meijer (main grocery store chains in this area) for their sales, and we usually use this to stock up on pantry type items. Usually Mr. ODA handles the details because he can recall the average prices and the trends of sales, but we were running low on cereal options, so I checked the Kroger ad and made a list while I could sit and compare prices at Walmart. I learned a lesson on how some things are only deals on the weekend, and then another lesson that if you’re shopping the weekly ad sales, don’t expect everything to be in stock at the end of the sale period. But it’s fun to watch your total go from $135 to $77 when you press check out on the self check out screen!

We’re still carrying $13k on a 0% interest credit card until closer to the end of the year. This was a couple of rental issues and our house’s new windows. Whenever we have a big purchase coming up, we open a new credit card to give ourselves a “free” personal loan. It works out to be about every 18 months we have something to put on a credit card. We started this with IVF for our oldest. A few years ago, it was new carpet for the house. This time it was new windows for the house. We have the cash to pay for it, but we also believe in leverage. We also don’t go for any 0% promotional offers when purchasing from another company (e.g., furniture, windows). When we open a credit card, we get some sort of other offer (e.g., cash back), so if we’re going to take a credit hit, we may as well get $200-500 back on it.

We’re about to go down our first braces road. It’s not fully braces, but a gentle expander to help open his airway. It should help get his jaw more in alignment by helping him breathe through his nose at night. As a byproduct, it should help with some crowding he’s experiencing, although the orthodontist wasn’t concerned with his level of crowding at his age. It was an eye opening experience. The mouth told these two guys a ton of information about my kid’s lifestyle and needs.

I’ve backed off a lot of hours with my job. I’m working from home and managing a few things in the background. My motivation has been lacking, but our youngest started school, so I have more time to get things done. The beginning of school has a lot of activities, so I’ve been focused on that mostly as I’m on the PTA board. Two HOAs are active right now, and one HOA barely does anything so I just check those emails and move on. One HOA has a revamp of the deeds and restrictions, and another one has a major insurance hurdle we’re working through.

We allowed one of ours to do two sports this fall. I’m quite against the concept because you need to be committed to a team for the sake of the team, so I don’t like when kids chose between two options and then one team is left with a hole. But the baseball season usually doesn’t touch weekends, likely for the fact that most kids are doing soccer and flag football on the weekends. This year, they had to include a couple of weekends because of field maintenance in October, so we’ve been run ragged around here. The end is in sight next week though. We’ve been doing baseball multiple nights, one night of soccer practice, two nights of gymnastics, and then soccer and baseball games on Saturdays. We’ve even had a Sunday make up for baseball. We haven’t been double booked all that much. We were going to miss soccer practice for a baseball game, but then the league cancelled practice due to heat. Our daughter is going to leave gymnastics tonight a bit early so that we can be at most of the baseball game.

RENTAL PROPERTIES

I’ve been pretty down on the rentals lately. They’ve required a lot more attention, and it’s not easy attention. If it was just calling out a trades person to handle an issue, that’s fine. Instead, I’m managing people and their emotions. That’s not my role. I don’t need to know your life sob story. I don’t need to know all the details about what is happening in your marriage/divorce. Your job is to pay me rent on time, and if it can’t be on time, communicate that. My job is to collect the rent and keep things in working order.

As of the 8th, we had $2300 remaining on rent collection (granted $750 of that is expected because that house is on a twice-per-month lease agreement). One house told me well in advance that they were going to be late because of a new job and the delay with the first pay check. One house strung me along up until the very last minute that part of rent would be late. And another house said that she’d have no problem paying rent even though she broke a toe, and then proceeded to only pay part of rent with zero communication on what’s happening. She eventually said she would pay the rest by the 16th. Managing 14 rentals isn’t easy, but I still recommend having multiple because when people don’t pay their rent, you have enough coming in to cover expenses on the houses.

My previous post outlined the details of a turnover that I was working on. That involved calling out HVAC to fix a frozen line. Outside of managing that and late rent payments, my other time was devoted to a house that we’re going to sell.

Yup. That’s where I’m at. It’s a small 800sf house with 2 bedrooms and the bathroom is only accessible between the two bedrooms. It’s not in a great neighborhood (actually, the area itself is a great location and there’s been a lot of turnover/renovation, but literally across the street from our house is an apartment complex that pulls some pretty bad things). I also have A LOT to say about the tenants that left this house and what we’ll have to do to turn it over, but for now, our energy is going into turning this place into a listing. We’re currently deciding between a 1031 exchange and just keeping the money to put towards a pool. As I’ve said: I’m over the rentals at the moment. So I’m leaning towards eating the capital gains and getting a pool put in. The biggest deciding factor right now is that I’m tired of having to put the stress into finding a fall/winter tenant, so I’m not all that interested in purchasing a house in October/November/December. Perhaps if we list it in a month or so, and it sits for months into the spring market, I may change by mind.

NET WORTH

Well, it went down. But I was surprised it was up last month. We haven’t made any move, and we’ve lost about $4,000 of projected income with a vacant house while we get it ready to list. The house is paid off, so all we need to manage at this point is the electricity. Our credit cards are a decent chunk lower; our spending has been low this month.

July Financial Update

mrsonedollarallowanceLeave a comment

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.