life

February Financial Update

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Before I get into an update, I have a quick perspective moment. Our preschool has a 3.5% processing fee to pay monthly tuition online. Tuition is $265, so the processing fee comes to $9.27. If I paid it online instead of writing a check each month, that would be an extra $83.43 I paid for basically nothing. For perspective, I spent $82 on a grocery run of essentials (e.g., dog food, paper towels, milk, eggs, etc).

RENTALS

I had to give notice to one household by 1/31 if I were to raise rent. Their lease ends 3/31, and that will mark 3 years with me. I was panicking because it’s our most expensive house (it’s also our nicest and biggest, and it’s fairly close to downtown). Rent has been $1750 for the last 4 years. Last year I missed the notification to raise it because a January deadline surprised me, but this year I put it on my calendar for January 1st to do. And then I dragged that calendar reminder through the whole month, only needing to then set an alarm to make sure I did it at 8pm on the 31st. I raised it to $1800 and they accepted within the hour. Phew. They’ve been late three times in 4 years and clearly communicated what was happening each time. We’ve had two major issues at the house that they rolled up their sleeves and helped mitigate the damage before the tech could get out there. They’re just really great tenants.

I had two tenants pay rent before the 1st and one partially pay before. That was surprising since the last two months I’ve had very late payments come through. I still have one person with a partial payment outstanding as of this morning.

We had a water heater go out on Thursday in one property, but otherwise I’m counting all my blessings that we made it through 2 weeks of below freezing without incident.

PERSONAL

I’ve preached monitoring your spending by writing it down for years, but I hadn’t done it. I had done it a few times retroactively, but I never made the time to keep on top of it to make pivots. With Mr. ODA leaving his career, that’s a high six-figure income that we’re without now. I’m working part time, but that’s basically a one-to-one ratio of income to health insurance. I’ve calculated that we need to be about $1350 per month in spending outside of the mandatory bills (e.g., mortgages, utilities, tuition, insurance). My threshold is lower than what Mr. ODA said is his threshold, so this isn’t a hard-and-fast amount, but one that is my “I feel OK if we’re close to this number” concept.

We screwed that up a good bit by purchasing a new vehicle and putting new tires on said vehicle immediately. We also had to pay for a previous heating issue fix in our house and a downpayment on new windows (which, quick side note, are glaringly needed as we go through 2 weeks of single digits and can feel the drafts). I’m also not counting the things that we do as mystery shops since those are effectively reimbursed (sometimes our cost isn’t fully covered since it’s a whole family outing and not a single person, but I’m not drilling down in that detail since I don’t have the specific break down of how Mr. ODA is getting paid). If I take those things out and remove expenses for rentals, then we spent $1597 in January.

This isn’t the best representation of our spending, but I’ll develop this information as I have comparisons month over month. I also can’t seem to pick a better color scheme without it being a very manual process. Grocery, Entertainment, and Food are our biggest slices there. The entertainment category is basically why I gave up categorizing things years ago. Here I put things like going out for a drink, because while it’s at a restaurant or bar, the sole purpose was to have a drink and hang out. It also includes going to a gymnastics meet with my daughter, my fitbit purchase (I guess because I’m counting it as extra spending and not a necessity), and gift giving costs. We spent $528 on groceries this month, which feels low. I pushed really hard to clear out the food we have in the house already during our 2 weeks of being snowed in, but I hope that this is an accurate representation of monthly spending on groceries.

NET WORTH

It is higher than last month, so that’s good. Credit cards are carrying $4500 worth of windows, so it’s nice how low of a balance those are outside of that 0% interest balance we’re holding onto. Our investments struggled a bit over the past month, but the payments on mortgages and loans helped offset that.

January Financial Update

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I have so much to say. January is a big time where people are willing to talk about finances, so many thoughts enter my mind that I want to squash some preconceived notions. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time.

PERSONAL

At work, I’ve spent this year managing year end things and getting the 2026 processes stood up. I’m supposed to be part time, but I’ve been putting way more hours in because of that process. The guy who was helping me left for another position and was out of the country all last week, so I had to make sure I was extra on top of things. With all those actions going on, I also was pulled into hiring someone to be my assistant (for lack of better term… it’s not assistant as in answering the phone and getting the mail… it’s doing the daily bank reconciliations and those types of tasks so I can focus on policy development). This has taken a significant amount of my time, but hopefully this person will be on board to help in a week.

Our youngest started preschool last month. He only goes 2 days per week, and both are my work days. I’d really like to get to a point where I can actually take advantage of guilt-free, kid-free time.

I have a new years resolution that I’m keeping close to the vest, but one part of it is to walk 10,000 steps per day. I’m failing miserably, but it’s a work in progress. My 7 year old son asks me constantly if I’ve hit my step goal. So…. maybe I’m teaching him it’s ok to fail, but keep trying? His new years resolution is to get better at being his nicest, and that’s just adorable. He also says he wants to learn basketball, and I just can’t bring myself to do that. We are signed up for Spring baseball that should start in March. The youngest has to wait until next Spring, but I can’t wait to see what he can do. I’ll probably also be putting swim lessons back on the docket in the next couple of months. The youngest hasn’t had any lessons. The oldest passed the test for his yellow band, but he needs to have a free style stroke to get the green band. The middle needs confidence; she can absolutely swim, but she likes to pretend she can’t do things.

RENTALS

Last month I reported that at the end of the day on the 5th, I was still missing 25% of the month’s rent. As of 7 am on the 5th, I had only received 30% of rent. Many came through, but there were more than the usual amount that didn’t. For one, I had to manage a grant program from one of the places a tenant lives. The check finally arrived yesterday, but it’s dated December 12th. They mailed to my PO Box, in a town I left in 2020. I didn’t even know my lease had an address on it, but that’s how long these people have been there. The check was returned to them, so my tenant went down there to give them my new address. I don’t love these people having my address, or that they now officially know I don’t live in the same state as them, but I needed to get this check. I gave them the address over her phone and received confirmation she typed it in. Somehow the check was returned to them, so my tenant had to pick up the check and FedEx it to me (I told her she didn’t have to pay that kind of money for that!). I have a tenant that pays twice per month (and pays a premium for that); her second part of rent is due tomorrow, so we’ll see if I can finally be fully paid for this month by the 19th.

I have a tenant who fell into some unfortunate circumstances. Her current plan is to vacate her place by the end of March. She’s lived there since 2019 with a dog and 5 cats, so that place will need all new carpet and a new paint job, but hopefully will be ready for a May 1 rental. Because she’s always paid and I knew her financial circumstances, I’ve been slow to increase her rent. She’s paying $975, but the market rent should easily get at least $1200. The house is in really good shape and is newer. We had people fighting over the other house in that town at $1150, and it’s an older house with only one bathroom.

FINANCES

Well we traded in our van for a newer year, but that’s a story for another post. I also still haven’t fixed my retirement account access from when I got a new phone number, so that’s a made up number.

I’m going to be tracking our spending much closer this year. We’re generally on the same path with our spending, and I know we don’t do anything extravagant. With Mr. ODA’s lack of income, I just want to keep a closer eye on that and pivot if we need to.

Mr. ODA has a more exact approach to figuring out what we can spend per month without dipping into savings. I like my number better (and it’s lower). I took our rental income, deducted rental fixed expenses, deducted our typical bills, and was left with just over $1300 per month. That would go towards food, clothing, gas, etc. If I remove things that are offset by a shop (Mr. ODA is a secret shopper) and the long term investment purchases (i.e., car and windows), we’re at $987 as of the 18th.

NET WORTH

We put $1500 on a credit card and finances $7500 to be able to save $1000. We also put $5500 on credit cards towards windows, which is also another post that’s coming. Our net worth took a hit for both these things. I also wasn’t able to update 3 accounts, so they’re just estimates, but at least our net worth still went up.

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.

May Financial Update

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*I’ve been working on this post for a week, so my numbers are a week old, but I don’t want to re-update them. I’m also posting on a Tuesday just to get this ‘out the door.’*

I’m starting to pull myself out of the overwhelmed hole I felt I was in. There’s still a lot going on, but I feel better equipped to stay on top of things. I had just been so exhausted, that I didn’t have the energy to do anything extra each day, and I was just getting by. Last weekend, I was able to work on pressure washing our patio and deck furniture (which was long overdue), and then I stained our deck. That’s been a pretty good springboard to me getting a fire lit under myself to get other things done, so that’s felt really good.

Our middle child graduated pre-k on Thursday. That was a big milestone, and my poor girl is so sad that she’s going to miss her teachers. She’s really struggled with my going to work and not being home all the time (although my time not home, while she would be home, averaged about 10 hours per week). I have things better organized at work, and I’m feeling good about my tasks and role in the office, so the hours I’m spending there are dwindling. I had agreed to about 20 hours per week, but I was closer to 26/28 each week. The biggest issue was waiting for someone to be available to help me, and then that everyone else is full time, so they don’t realize I’m trying to get out of here by 2 pm each day. This week our oldest graduates kindergarten and has many events around end of school.

RENTALS

One of the mortgages has been paid enough that the balance dropped from 6 digits to 5 digits. It’s still a lot of money owed there, but that felt like a nice accomplishment when I went in to capture the balance!

June is Richmond tax season for these houses. That means I’ll be paying out large chunks of money for the houses we have no escrow on.

We had a few maintenance needs come up. One house had the water heater flood the basement. Luckily, I think we’re OK on that front. We replaced the water heater. The gas wasn’t hooked up right, so the tenant called the plumber to get that squared away. This happened while I was in a different state, and I’m so grateful it happened in a house with a handy tenant.

We had some flashing fall off a roof line. This wasn’t a priority to address at the time, but the tenant started claiming allergies were flaring up because birds were getting in the attic. Sometimes you just need to accept that’s the story you’re hearing. We had a handyman go over there and verify there are no birds anywhere. The “hole” she thought she saw was just where the soffit was hanging a bit, but there were no gaps in the wood structure itself. He tacked up the soffit, and I contracted with another company to repair the one piece of flashing.

That handyman also went out and handled a wasp nest. At that house, the tenant says a window won’t stay open when she opens it, and we let her know it’s on our radar now, but it won’t be fixed just yet as our people are spread thin and that’s not an emergency. That house had a temporary tenant in it (housing with our current tenant). To cover the tenant and us, I asked for a $500 deposit. When they moved out, I had our tenant sign that there was no damage, and I returned the deposit.

We’re still working on the major termite damage that occurred at another house. There was quite the domino effect. Leaks from bathrooms and the laundry room created a very wet environment, which created a breeding ground for termites, which feasted on our wood all over that place. The crawl space got cleaned up, but we’ve been waiting over a month for the bathrooms to get replaced and fixed. I’m hopeful that it’ll start next week, but frustrated nonetheless.

I had a leak from a toilet bolt at another house. I was frustrated because we had just been called out for water on the floor at this house recently, but it turns out this was necessary. When the house is a certain age, things just wear away and need replaced.

We also had a limb fall from a tree at another rental. The tenant explained how much of a liability it was for me. I love when tenants instruct me on my level of liability (that’s sarcasm). We have a tree guy that’s been super useful for many things and he handled it the next day with no problem.

PERSONAL

We haven’t been spending much money. Most of our money these days goes to grocery shopping. On our current statement for our main credit card, we only have 11 transactions recorded for over 3 weeks.

We paid our last month of pre-school for our second. They are closing the school and they didn’t want to add on days for the snow days that occurred, so they gave us $50 off the last month of tuition to cover the 2 days we were owed for make-ups. Since the school is closing, everyone scattered, and we ended up not getting into another preschool next year for our youngest. So at this point, that’s an extra $375 per month in our pockets next year – unless a spot opens up for the littlest.

Mr. ODA took the buy out, which I think I mentioned last month. His last day of work was April 30th. He said he’s settling into the not working concept and starting to get over the desire to know what’s happening at work and with his programs he worked so hard on. He’s done a lot of work around the house here, including treating for termites in a very intense fashion, but that was cool to see.

NET WORTH

Two months ago, my job asked for my goals. It’s a specific document that I was to fill out. Someone else had mentioned their net worth goal, and our next big step would be $5 million net worth. Well, the market has been in shambles, and our net worth plummeted from where it was. I thought it prudent to not make such a goal when our net worth is completely reliant on the market actions right now (i.e., we’re not selling/purchasing or making any big moves that would drastically change our net worth outside of the market actions). We’re finally on the upswing and now at the highest net worth we’ve been, so that’s encouraging after those big dips recently.

April Financial Update

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We started getting emails about end of school year activities, and boy was that a surprise that we’re at that point. The middle one is done mid-May and the big kid is done at the end of May. Less than 2 months until summer break.

Mr. ODA took the second round of the government’s offer for administrative leave, which means he would only have a few weeks left working. I’m still working my part time job, which is taking way more hours than we had planned for. I’m enjoying it, but it’s been a juggling act with the family, which is probably why my son who absolutely loves school begged me to stay home because his belly hurt last week.

Buckle up because apparently I have a lot to share this month.

RENTALS

We received about $600 in tax payment reimbursements from one of our localities, so that was a fun surprise this month. Really helps my psyche that I have a tenant who hasn’t fully paid, didn’t tell us why ahead of time, and hasn’t been up front with when she’s going to actually pay us.

I executed 2 short term leases. Both included a rent increase for their short term period; one house is increased by $75 and the other by $25. Luckily, both are here in the Central KY area, so we can flip it between tenants. One is scheduled to leave June 30th. That house will need new carpet in the bedrooms, and it’ll need probably a whole-house paint job again. They smoked in there, even though we covered the lack of smoking rule multiple times. I’d be more upset about it if the carpet hadn’t reached its useful life years ago. The other house leaves July 31, and I can’t even tell you where we’ll need to begin with that one. She made a wood feature wall without permission. She had a giant fish tank without permission. She spent a lot of time doing things that really weren’t an improvement, so I’m definitely worried about what we’re going to uncover in that house. Mr. ODA and I are talking about fixing it up and selling it. We may look for a short term renter so that we can sell it in the Spring instead of this Fall.

I had 2 other properties accept a rent increase that will go into effect later this year. I require 60 days notice for changes so that starting at the 30 day mark I can begin advertising it if needed. One house goes up by $25 per month as of June 1, and the other goes up by $50 per month as of July 1. I also have another property that has a rent increase of $50 per month going into effect next month.

I have 4 houses that renewed another year, and I didn’t change their monthly rent rate. There are 4 more houses that haven’t been discussed. My intent is to have them renew for a year at their current rate. There are 2 of those 4 that could leave at the end of this term, but time will tell.

We have multiple maintenance issues to address. One house requires a tree trimmed off the roof, the siding cleaned, and the back deck stained/painted. We still have termite damage we’re dealing with at a house in Richmond. I have a leaking toilet that was just addressed, and then they hit me with a faulty HVAC unit during a heat wave. Then we have some houses that really need eyes on them to see what condition they’re in at some point this summer back in Richmond. It’s amazing to me how people just don’t care to tell a landlord that something is broken. I woke up this morning to a text that one of the houses here has a flooded basement due to a water heater failure.

I spent some more time fighting my insurance guy here. It irks me so much when I see him offer up his services on the local facebook group for property owners. He’s quite terrible. I sent him photos of a house that had some issues with a cluttered backyard and had the tenant clean that up. I had to fight him last month on an increase where he changed one house from a crawl space to a basement when I assure you that the vines growing through the windows solidify it should not be deemed a “basement.” When the dust settled from that debacle that he was insanely unresponsive to, I ended up owing $9.68. When I asked why my account wasn’t put back the way it was found before this mess he created, he said he didn’t know but it’s probably from the audit and changing square footage. HIs guessing and not actually answering infuriated me. I gave up and paid it, but then I ran to get quotes from other people. I hadn’t done that before because our 4 claims in a 12 months period are killing us (again, because I really wanted trees to fall on us!). I hate when people make the claim that because it’s not a lot of money, I should just give up and accept it. That’s a ridiculous way to treat people.

PERSONAL

Our electric bill is almost double what it was this time last year thanks to the vehicle charging and hot tub. Our electric bill is relatively low, so that’s not all that surprising. We also have 5 full people in this house now (as much as you can count a 2 year old as a full person… but he knows how to control light switches and eats a ton of food that we need to cook him, so I’m sure he’s a factor there!).

I’ve been working at my new part time job for over a month now. Mr. ODA was making fun of my hourly rate, but I’ll tell ya, it felt good to receive a paycheck that wasn’t $45 like it was for a day of subbing at the preschool.

I took the kids to get haircuts. My middle has had her hair cut once before, but I’ve cut the boys’ hair forever. I had family coming into town and the oldest was looking really shaggy. So I swallowed my pride and threw money at the problem, which is very out of character in this household. I just didn’t have the time to cut their hair, clean them, and clean up the mess. For $66 and 45 minutes from the time I left home until I got back, it was well worth it to me.

I had a medical procedure done this month. We haven’t met our deductible. In February, they said I had to pay my deductible to them. I said that didn’t make sense and refused to have them hold $2800 of my money for 2 months. They gave me an attitude and said I could never ever ever ask for a payment plan in the future, so that I could pay $500 to hold the date. I then showed up for the procedure, knowing I haven’t met my deductible, and they didn’t take any money from me. Another business model that bullies the customer into illogical money decisions. I also had an eye doctor appointment that was frustrating in itself, but I’ll spare you those insurance and communication details.

On top of everything else I’m juggling, Mr. ODA is coaching our kids’ t-ball team. Coaching means that I am team mom. That means that I’m responsible for communicating updates from the league (in the slow and haphazard fashion I receive information), gather value card sales that are required of every team member, organizing a basket for a raffle, and the best one – raising $350 for team sponsorship. What the heck, man?! Where did I say that my signing up of two children to play in the league means I have history or ability to gather money from businesses?? Well, I did it. I raised $350 and another mom raised $200 for the team.

No financial impact, but I’m also juggling our HOA board duties. I released our longstanding property manager and hired a new company, which took effect April 1. That’s taken a lot of time to get them stood up and make sure we stay on track for our annual meeting schedule in June.

NET WORTH

And with all of that said, that doesn’t even address the giant reduction in our investments that continues to happen. To counter some of the loss, I updated our property values for our houses. I don’t do that every month because they don’t move very much, but I can usually count on a few increases as the spring market ramps up. Our net worth did slightly increase (based on yesterday’s market closure, not today’s) from last month, which was a nice surprise.

I wonder why I’m tired and bogged down, but that post outlining what I’ve done recently made me realize all I was able to accomplish even though I felt like I was a jack of all trades and master of none. Hopefully things will settle down in our lives going forward now, even if I know there are definitely two house turnovers in my future.

Health Insurance EOBs

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I’m back to discuss this topic. It all comes down to “protect your money.” You need to pay attention to what you’re being billed for before you pay the bill. I’ll just throw out there that I think I had to make a call to correct an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) twice when I had Blue Cross, but it’s nearly every claim with our current insurance.

I had a minor outpatient surgical procedure in March 2025. The pre-op appointments started in January. That’s important because we have a deductible. I don’t trust this company’s calculation of our deductible, so I was paying very close attention to the EOBs for the first few months of the year.

The number of times that I have been sent to collections on a health balance due to their inability to process things correctly is pretty annoying. Every single time, it’s been because of their processes and the lack of insurance communication. Every single time, I’ve been on top of communicating with them to let them know what’s going on with insurance and received assurance that they had everything under control. Then I find out that I’ve been sent to collections.

In this instance, my insurance was really struggling for the first 2-3 months of the year. They had a data breach that screwed up so much of the processing and everything was delayed. I had multiple appointments in January and March (which was also surgery). There were so many insurance delays in processing that the doctors office sent me my statement dated June 16th. In their infinite wisdom, they counted the date of service as the time that I should have paid instead of the time that they received the EOB, and since the date of service was January, I got sent straight to collections. Wonderful.

I can’t stand that they tell me to check their website for help when I’ve already struggled to get their website to do the basic things it should do. But I spent hours calling these people (and the people they tell me to call because they think they can’t help). I finally got through to someone who could help me and understand what my situation was. It turns out I was in “pre-collections,” so not officially reported yet (on my credit; just that they were going to make an attempt to collect, even though I’d love to actually pay them on time). She let me pay the two EOBs worth of a balance and clear the collection record.

There’s no detailed point here. It’s just simply not to trust the doctor/hospital and insurance company to have your best interest in mind. Don’t assume that the paperwork is going to make its way to you. Pay attention to what’s out there and could be pending and a possible bill owed. But even once a bill gets to you, verify that it was paid by insurance correctly and that the amount you owe is accurate. I’ve seen the doctor’s office bill me for the amount unallowable by insurance. I’ve seen a doctor’s office not apply a payment I had made as a “coinsurance” at time of service, even though I had record. I’ve had doctor’s offices require payment up front of $50, but the actual payment owed ended up being $4.

Protect your money. Pay attention.