summer

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.

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.

May Financial Update

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RENTAL PROPERTIES

We paid $2,850 in extra principal towards the main mortgage we’re paying down, leaving that mortgage with a balance of $5,500. We had a $4k flooring purchase on another house that has set our pay off timeline a few weeks back, but we’ll still have that mortgage paid off in the next couple of months. We have a rental property that we purchased in 2016 that has flooring that’s at least that old. The carpet has long passed its useful life, and the linoleum in the kitchen and laundry room has started to peel up at the seam. Typically, we wouldn’t want to replace flooring while a tenant still lives there, but they’ve lived with this for almost a year, and they’ve been our tenants since we purchased the house. As a means of keeping the tenant happy, we agreed to replace the flooring in all the rooms except the bathrooms.

We had two of our tenants not pay rent by the 5th, as required by the lease. They’re the two that are typically late, and they’re typically not up front with telling us about it. We’ve said several times that we’re really flexible landlords, but we can’t be flexible if we’re not told what is happening. With one tenant, who had just recently irked us with a plumbing issue and being incommunicado, we didn’t even reach out for information. We’ve had enough of their antics and having to chase them for rent. So I simply sent them their notice of default letter, outlining all their rights as tenants as now required under COVID-related procedures. I received an email letting me know that they’d pay on the 7th. I love their nonchalant response, like they hold the power and will pay whenever they feel like it (hmm). For the other tenant that was late, she texted to say she’d be late with the payment on the 7th, and then on the 7th only paid part of the rent due. She said she was in a car accident and there was an issue with her sick leave pay out, but she’d get it to us when it got fixed. She resolved it on the 12th, although still without the late fee.

We were able to get the invoice on the HVAC replacement for one property, which meant we paid our partner the $3,288 we owed him, on top of his usual $2,167 that we pay out for him to pay the mortgages and then his share of the profits (since I manage all the rent collections).

OUR SPENDING

Our credit card balances are high for several reasons. The $4k flooring purchase; as well as the insurance for one of our properties that isn’t escrowed because we paid off that mortgage, which was $436; an expensive gift purchase that isn’t transparent in the cash and credit line items because that cost was split 3 ways (i.e., we received 2/3 of that cost back in cash, but it’s still reflect in the credit line); and our travel.

We booked a camp site for the end of the month that required payment up front. We just got back from a trip, which increased our spending. But I’ll note that when we travel, we’re not eating expensive meals. Our interest is in the experiences and activities, rather than exploring sit down local restaurants. Our food for 5 days cost us $161 as a family of 4. We also ended up only paying for 2 of the 4 nights in the hotel because the air conditioning was broken, even after they came to ‘fix’ it, and then, when I was checking under the bed to see if any toys or socks got left behind as we were leaving, I found a large, dead roach. We didn’t ask for any comps; one was automatically reflected in my final invoice without my prompting, and then when the manager was speaking to Mr. ODA about his stay, he volunteered removing another night.

We opened a new credit card to take advantage of the bonuses since we knew we’d have this travel and the flooring cost to meet the $4,000 spending threshold for their bonus. This credit card has an annual fee of $95 and no 0% interest period, which goes against our norm when looking to open a new credit card. However, the bonus can be transferred to our Chase Rewards Portal, where we can use it to book travel at 50% the cost. We also received a $50 grocery credit.

ROUTINE UPDATES

  • My husband and I cashed in the last of his savings bonds that we got as children, so that was an extra $735 that we brought it that wasn’t planned.
  • We paid about $6,074 for our regular mortgage payments. Several of our properties had mortgage increases due to escrow shortages. I haven’t figured out which I dislike more: planning for tax and insurance payments, or the large escrow increases that seem to happen year after year. I think it’s the escrow though.
  • Every month, $1100 is automatically invested between each of our Roth IRAs and each child’s investment accounts. I should also note that I don’t speak to other investments because they happen before take-home pay, but my husband maxes out his TSP (401k) each year as well, which I had also done when I was employed.
  • Our grocery shopping cost us $700. Honestly, I don’t even know how to explain that cost jump. I think it’s because my husband shopped some deals at Kroger and Costco, so we stocked up on some things that aren’t part of our routine purchasing.   
  • We spent $200 on gas. Two trips to Cincinnati, our trip to Atlanta, and then more-than-usual trips around town. 
  • $400 went towards utilities. It’s higher than last month because we paid 3 months of our cell phones, which gets us back on quarterly billing as a family. Utilities include internet, cell phones, water, sewer, trash, electric, and investment property sewer charges that are billed to the owner and not the tenant. We still haven’t sought reimbursement from the builder on our electric bill, but this month’s bill was even less than the last month’s. 
  • Our entertainment costs included baseball game tickets for our trip as well as two games later this summer, parking for the games this past weekend, a new shirt for our son, activities for the kids, and the hotel. This past month, we spent $650 on things I’d classify as entertainment related. I also included boarding for our dog ($100) in this total.
  • Speaking of our dog, he had his annual appointment (shots and the year’s worth of preventative medicines), and that cost us $500.
  • We spent $292 eating at restaurants and ordering take out. We utilized a Door Dash credit on one of our Chase credit cards, which was about $30.
  • But! I killed it with running errands this month and actually returning things that needed to be returned. I returned $150 worth of items one day!
  • We paid our State taxes during this period too. Between two states, that was $954. Also, anecdotally, I’ll share that we spent $6.40 to mail our Virginia tax return. We processed our taxes through Credit Karma, as we had done last year. We got through the federal e-file and moved onto the state filing, only to find out that if you’re filing partial states, Credit Karma doesn’t support it. I had to print 70 pages of our federal return, sign it, and ship it off to Virginia.

SUMMARY

Our net worth actually dipped this month. The stock market is the main factor in that, but the house valuation estimates are starting to level off and look more realistic as well.

Between our personal lives and our business life with these rental properties, we were sure kept busy. We expect the Spring months to be a busy time of year, and honestly it feels good to be active again. While we’ve loosened the purse strings for the summer months, especially after having done hardly anything for the last year, it was still a shock to see just how much we spent in these categories. But that’s the benefit of looking at your finances regularly. We can either choose to remain on course with our summer plans, or we can dial it back if we feel this was more than we expected.

Since we know we’re on top of our finances and have set up a healthy mentality when it comes to spending, we’re comfortable looking at this information once a month. If you’re currently developing these money habits, you may want to do these types of check-ins more frequently.