tenant turnover

December Financial Update

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

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

RENTALS

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

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

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

PERSONAL

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

NET WORTH

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

August Financial Update

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

RENTALS

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

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

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

HEALTH COSTS

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

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

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

PERSONAL

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

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

NET WORTH

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

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

July Financial Update

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

PERSONAL

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

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

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

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

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

RENTALS

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

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

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

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

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

NET WORTH

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

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

January Financial Update

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

RENTALS

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

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

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

PERSONAL

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

NET WORTH

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

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

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

April Financial Update

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I had this post mostly written by Wednesday, but we traveled earlier this week, and I haven’t kept track of the day very well. This is the first I’ve been able to update our net worth and get this done. Ironic, considering how I started this post when I expected it to be on time. And now..

This past month has been exhausting on me. I knew March was going to be busy. We had a bunch of sports schedules to manage, lots of kids birthday parties, hosting my dad for a long weekend that coincided with 3 family birthdays and the first anniversary of my mom’s passing, an assortment of Easter activities, a trip, and random other events. On top of managing these day-to-day things for our family, our deck replacement started, and we had to work on a massive turnover of a rental property. I’m in a perpetual state of tired these last few weeks.

DECK REPLACEMENT

On July 2nd of last year, a storm blew threw that destroyed our neighborhood. Honestly, we’re surprised by how little actual structure damage there was for our neighborhood because it looked like a war zone with the amount of trees down. A couple of houses had a tree fall on their roof, but only cause minimal damage that resulted in shingle replacement. We appeared to bear the brunt of the worst, which was a tree falling on our deck, crushing our furniture, moving all the supports, and cracking the concrete blow it. Another tree missed falling on one of our cars by centimeters, but that limb ended up cracking our driveway apron. We struggled communicating the extent of the damage with our insurance company, and they eventually realized what was needed and paid out on it five months after the incident. Our construction started on March 18th.

It hasn’t been an easy process. It’s emotionally draining on me because there were communication issues with our contractor that he wasn’t taking responsibility for. Then there were minor issues, but issues nonetheless. For instance, they installed waterproofing so the patio would be a dry area, but they cut through one of the barriers. Instead of realizing that was going to be an issue and fixing it themselves, I had to point it out. Then we went out there while it was raining to check it, only to see that there are 3 spots where water is just pouring through the seams. That just takes a lot out of me to have that conversation. They cracked off the top of our sewer cleanout, which not only made a mess in the yard, also caused a backup into our basement tub and toilet once it was glued back on because of a pressurizing issue (we think).

Then there are those hidden things that take energy, such as managing how to move money out of savings (while not exceeding the maximum of six transfers) and keeping track of all the bills, while ensuring the checking account has the right amount of money to cover the bills paid.

RENTAL PROPERTIES

Everyone paid rent on time! I had two technically pay on the 6th, but I sat waiting to see if it showed up before reaching out that morning. One of our tenants bought a house and vacated as of March 31st. They actually had left the house a little early, which was really helpful to us because the house needed a lot of work. The house had been flipped before we bought it. We knew everything was going to eventually need attention, but we hung on as long as possible. The neighborhood is really nice, so it was time to bring the state of the house up to a better standard. It had been “good enough” all these years, but there were definitely some items that should be replaced. This ended up being a huge overhaul, costing us over $10k. I’ll go into all the details in a future post.

NET WORTH

We’ve made a few substantial payments on the deck. We had been investing the money from the insurance company, while we waited for them to finish their estimates and then while waiting for the contractor to begin. Our taxable investment accounts have decreased a bit from that, and they’ll continue to decrease as this project finishes up in the next 2-3 weeks. The market is lower than it was a month ago, but our house values are starting their upward Spring trend, offsetting some of that loss. Overall, our net worth increased over the last month, but only by about $4,500 instead of the drastic increases we had been seeing month-to-month.

March Financial Update

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We’re just going to cut to the chase – $4 million net worth! I mentioned that this was a goal for this year. Unlike other years worth of large jumps because of purchasing houses, this was less in our control (granted, our market allocation decisions are what’s driving it…. and by “our,” I absolutely mean only Mr. ODA’s because I don’t do anything in that realm).

RENTALS

Well, we’ve had a quiet month. What’s going to be funny is, I’m going to list the things that we did. Quiet doesn’t mean silent or without effort, but we’ve had a rough go of it over the last year, so this was a welcomed break.

We had termites at a property. We pay $98 annually for their termite warranty program, since we found extensive termite damage and live termites when we bought the house. We’ve had to treat the house several times, so this $98 is a steal. However, I’m wondering why we keep needing to treat the house.

We paid $125 for a plumber to go out to a clogged sink. When we received the invoice, it was for 2 plumbers to go. Between the phone call that they were on their way and the tenant saying they were great, only 35 minutes had elapsed. The company charged us almost $300. Mr. ODA called to ask why they choose to send two plumbers to do a one-man job, while also charging us for it. The owner said it was for liability purposes, which Mr. ODA fought back on. They agreed to a reduced rate, but we were only charged $125, which was less than agreed upon.

We had our third tenant move in, after we unexpectedly had to turnover three houses in the middle of winter. We also were given notice by another tenant that she’s vacating by the end of March. We handled increases for two houses (one handled by a property manager to increase $50/month, and one handled by me to increase by $25/month).

We had one tenant pay on the morning of the 6th with no communication, so I did have our property manager let them know that’s not going to be ok. We also had a usual suspect pay late, with the late fee. However, their communication was frustrating. They said they’d pay on the 6th. At the end of the 6th, they said the money hadn’t cleared like they expected. No communication on the 7th. I asked for an updated on the morning of the 8th, and they said it would be that day. At 11 pm, I hadn’t received anything and reached out. I was then told that money was going into the ATM right then so that she could pay. Sometimes I wish I could do a deep dive into tenant finances so that I could help them out.

PERSONAL

Mr. ODA has a trip in July where a group of guys will hike in the Rockies. Our family is going out before that trip is scheduled to do our own exploring. We booked 4 round trip plane tickets, and Mr. ODA handled the lodging booking for the guys’ portion. That’s almost $3,000 worth of purchases, so our credit cards are higher than usual.

Speaking of the plane tickets. We purchased gift cards from Costco for Southwest. The gift cards are essentially $450 for $500 worth of purchasing power at Southwest. We bought two, therefore saving $100 on the tickets. For an extra few clicks on the computer, and the 15 minutes waiting time before the e-gift cards were delivered to my email, that’s $100 that can be used somewhere else.

We bought a new vanity for our bathroom. That was about $700 for the vanity, faucet, toilet flusher, and mirror. I sold the old vanity (in rough shape) for $30. And because I’m proud that I did most of it on my own, here’s a picture. I needed Mr. ODA’s help with the supply lines because I lost patience with how tightly they were screwed on and my lack of progress. I cut the baseboards down to size, except I somehow measured wrong on one quarter round cut (I was cutting while it was on the wall). Mr. ODA cut and installed the replacement piece for me.

We finished up the ski season. The kids did great. I was really proud of them for sticking with it. We used our season pass well (i.e., exceeding the cost had we bought individual tickets for each visit). I took two of the three kids to the aquarium, and we took the baby for a procedure at a local children’s hospital. We’ve started tee ball for our oldest. Our March is very full and busy, so we’re getting into the swing of things and keeping track of the schedule.

NET WORTH

Well, we far exceeded that $4 million goal. The market went up big, with our biggest changes being in our retirement account, IRAs, and cash. Our cash increase is offset by the lower amount in our Treasury account. Some of the short term bonds were transferred back into our savings account, and we’ve kept that money in savings since our deck replacement is slated to begin.

February Financial Update

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RENTALS

The rentals were expensive this month with $4600 paid out. This doesn’t include work that’s currently under way, but not paid for yet.

I paid for a water heater replacement, which was $1,904. I had to pay insurance on a larger property ($793). I paid the balance of the window replacement at one property, which was $1,064. I also paid for a plumber to address a leaking toilet and a rotted faucet ($325). We had a new tenant move into a vacant property, so we had that cleaned before her arrival ($165).

I had to pay for a plumber’s service call ($95) for clogged drains, for them to refer me to a rooter company ($250). I emailed that tenant that preventive measures need to be taken because I’ve not had so many calls to one property. She assured me they have taken appropriate measures and it’s just old pipes. The only problem being that we have several other properties with old pipes that never call for clogs.

We’ve turned over two properties and are about to turnover another property in the dead of winter. It’s so frustrating to be in such a position. All of those stories will be elaborated on in future posts.
– On one property, we charged a lease break fee of one month’s rent to cover our losses (the fee was different based on the month in which they broke the lease). Luckily, that covered our entire month of January being vacant, but we found someone for 2/1.
– Another tenant asked to leave a property because he lost his job. That was handled a bit different because we didn’t know in advance that this tenant would want to leave mid-lease. We told them there’s a fee of $250 (which is what it costs us to pay the property manager to find a new tenant), and that they had to pay rent until we found a new tenant. We didn’t lose any rent on that property.
– Now, we have a newly vacant property because the tenant can no longer afford it. I’m not expecting to recover her unpaid rent at this point. We approved a tenant to start 2/28, leaving us with 27 days of lost rent. However, we sent a lease over for them to sign. They’re currently dragging their feet on signing because they want to pay with their tax return. I don’t love that idea. They’ve been easy to communicate with up until this point, just slow. I’m hoping this gamble works out.

PERSONAL FINANCES

I had to transfer money to Mr. ODA’s account to cover the purchase of our new back door and a new treadmill (although that was only $400). This is an interesting concept for us. Mr. ODA had an account before we met. His account was grandfathered in to new terms and conditions at this bank. He’s kept his checking account and credit card for the rewards (I have access to the account; my name just isn’t on it). Any online purchases go on that credit card. However, that account only receives $250 every other week from Mr. ODA’s pay check (occasionally it’ll receive rent via Zelle). So sometimes, we need to transfer money from our main checking account to cover that credit card payment. All our security deposit accounts are with that bank too. So I had to then transfer from a security deposit account into his checking account, and then have him send that money to our main account. It wasn’t our finest money management moment.

Not much else happened this past month. We’ve gone skiing with the kids some more, I went on a moms’ cruise (which was amazing), took a small trip to piggyback Mr. ODA’s work trip, and have done activities around town. We’re gearing up for a procedure at a local children’s hospital next week, which I’m expecting will wipe out our deductible. Luckily that’s only $3,000, but I’m sure we’ll hit it. We’ll actually be late hitting it this year; it’s usually done in January.

NET WORTH

One of this year’s goal is to hit $4 million net worth. I thought it was going to be a ways away, but the market has been up big recently. We’re only about $14k away from that goal now!

January Financial Update

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As an intro for newbies: I write a monthly finance post. These posts started out as a way to manage our dollars spent per category. It evolved to show insight into my monthly money management and thought process. It’s also meant as a way to remind people that they should be looking at their money regularly.

Every month, I’m looking back at my spending, looking at trends on the higher level (e.g., why is my credit card higher than I expected), and sharing the rental property expenses and activities that I’ve accomplished.

I typically post on Thursdays. Unfortunately, life got in the way. I had 98% of this written, but I hadn’t updated our accounts until 10 pm, so this is now posting off-schedule, on Friday morning. Sorry about that!

RENTALS

I suppose with 13 houses, it’s inevitable that I’ll have to keep track of one.. or a few.. to collect their rent. One tenant is set up to pay twice per month (they pay a premium for this). They paid both parts of December late, and the first part of January late. They pay a late fee with that. I had two other tenants pay late by a few days, but they communicated this up front, and I didn’t collect late fees.

I’ve been sharing that I have a tenant who has been behind on rent since October 1 and has communicated very poorly. By the end of December, she was caught up with rent due, but no late fees. We’re now 11 days into January without any payment. My frustration with her was that she didn’t communicate at all for the first two months, and didn’t keep her word on anything that she said she was going to do, but didn’t tell us that something would change. I always say that I’m willing to help and work with you, but you have to talk to me. If I have to beg you to tell me what the plan is, I can’t help.

I paid a carpet cleaner $250 and paid a painter $2000 for a house that we’re turning over. The carpet was new before the last tenant, but they were there for over 3 years, so it had to be done. They didn’t damage the walls, but my property manager said that all the walls looked like different colors, and I didn’t trust “touching up” 4 year old paint. The paint looks amazing, so I’m happy I went for the whole house.

I paid just over $1000 as a deposit on 3 new windows for a house, which are scheduled to be replaced on Monday (a couple of weeks for new windows far exceeded my expectations!). We had replaced the majority of windows when we bought the house. However, at the time, the kitchen and bathroom windows were considered an irregular size, and we were told they were going to be $2000 just themselves, when we were paying $2000 for all the other windows. I don’t know what pricing scheme changed in 5 years, but now all sizes are the same price, and the 3 of them are $2000 now.

We had a tenant ask to be released from his lease, which we concurred to. We had terms associated with that, which I’ll share in a separate post. We were able to get a couple into that house with no loss of rent, which has been appreciated.

We’re under contract with our handyman to do work on a house, so that’s over $5,000 of cost that is waiting to rear its head out there.

PERSONAL

This was a month of spending in activities. I signed up for a 5k in August with “early bird” pricing, our daughter’s acro class had semester tuition due, and the kids’ monthly school tuition was paid as usual. Mr. ODA bought a new battery for his car and installed that. On somewhat of a whim, we replaced our back door, which was over $1100 added to Mr. ODA’s credit card.

Just before Christmas, we took a trip. It was just to Cincinnati, which we regularly do as a day-trip. However, we wanted to accomplish a few things this time around. We went to Top Golf for 90 minutes and lunch, let the baby nap at the AirBnB, went to Zoo Lights, spent the night, and then went skiing the next morning (the kids’ first time!). We already purchased season passes (and equipment) for skiing for 4 of us, and had already purchased the zoo annual membership. Without the cost of those two things, our trip cost $330 for Top Golf, lodging, parking (we stayed in the city), a ski lesson for our 5 year old, and food. Our lodging for 1 night was nearly $200 and was significantly more than we’d typically spend on lodging. However, we’re still in a phase of life where the baby needs the be in a space by himself so he sleeps for a nap and through the night. That means we look for a place with at least 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, or 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom (bonus points for master-sized closets or an extra bathroom with no windows for me to black out). We then made 2 day trips since then, and the kids are doing awesome on skis.

NET WORTH

Our cash has decreased, but that was offset to taxable investments because of our Treasury Direct accounts. Even with our extra spending, our credit card balances are comparable to last month’s. The increase in net worth from last month is mostly due to increases in our investment accounts.

This year’s goal is to hit $4 million net worth. Mr. ODA said that to our financial advisor via Instagram, and he didn’t share that publicly because it wasn’t relatable. The point in sharing here is that, well it’s January and people set goals, and to note that even if this goal specifically isn’t attainable to you in the short term, know that we also once had an account balance well below where we’re currently at. Consistent investing in the market (maxing out the 401k, maxing out the Roth IRAs, and establishing regular investing and watching the market) is a large contributing factor to where we are 10 years later. If I take the investment properties out of the equation, we’re still over $2 million net worth. That doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s something you can start working towards today.

December Financial Update

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I’m not even sure where to start for this month. It has been a whirlwind. There were a lot of tax payments last month, and this month I was still paying those among several other things.

PURCHASES

I purposely paid my credit card statement a little earlier than the due date so that it wouldn’t be that high for this update, but then I put a bunch of charges on it over the last two days. To catch you up – we’ve been holding money in our savings account for as long as possible. When we were getting 0.2% interest on it, it didn’t matter when I paid the card, so I typically paid it shortly after the statement closed. Now that we’re getting 4.22%, it’s worth keeping the money in there to earn interest, and then paying the credit card closer to the due date.

Our regular-use credit card is currently holding: $300 towards my dad’s iPhone (I should really share that mess of a story in purchasing that) (also, that doesn’t clearly account for my sisters having paid $200 towards that because that’s just “cash” in our checking account balance), $500+ of the kids preschool tuition, renewing our zoo membership for $139 (honestly, 5 of us enjoying the zoo for the year for that price is wonderful), over $200 for signing our son up for tee ball, two car insurance payments, and a rental insurance payment. I don’t typically go through the charges like that, but it’s just been a bunch of just-big-enough charges to grab my attention on our credit card balance. We drove to-and-from NY, so our gas station payments are higher than average too. As a reminder, the credit card balance you see also includes $10k worth of new carpet that we’re paying slowly on a 0% interest credit card.

RENTAL PROPERTY EXPENSES

I paid two of our Richmond houses’ taxes. The taxes are due on January 14th, but if I pay them this year, then it reduces what’s viewed as our ‘profit.’ I make sure to pay any known January bills in December of each year. Those two houses are so tiny, so their tax payments being so much larger than they once were kind of hurt (I’ve discussed the increases in property assessments, thereby increasing taxes). It was about $2,000 paid out (on top of all the things I paid over the last two months).

I also had to pay two supplemental taxes for Lexington. Government entities not meeting deadlines is a pet peeve of mine (I used to work for the Federal government). Last year, I completely missed that paperwork I received was a supplement bill for education, and then I received a penalty.I thought it was their typical assessment notice since it was outside of tax payment time. Luckily it was a few dollars, but I was so lost. This year, I paid close attention when I received an extra tax-related document. This supplemental bill was for trash services. Again, a few dollars. But think of all the extra paperwork, staff hours, postage, payment processing cost to collect an extra $20 from every house.

RENTAL PROPERTY INCOME

We had two tenants give us notice that they’re moving out. While extremely unfortunate timing on the year, I’m also human and understanding of their need. One tenant had a traumatic work event that led to him being laid off, and another family bought a house. We’ll find a way to get the houses re-rented as soon as possible, even though our vacancy time may be longer than it would have been if we were looking for a May 1st or June 1st renter. We have someone interested in both houses at this time, so that’s encouraging.

We had 4 tenants not pay in full. They all reached out to me to let me know in advance, and they paid what they could by the 5th (I always appreciate that – it holds them accountable, and it allows me to not foot all of the bills that I have to pay on the houses). As of the end of the 5th, we were short over $3,000 worth of rent ($1300 of that was for the house that has been late since October 1st and is finally working towards paying their debts).

As of today, we’re short $2,400. The tenant who’s playing catch up only has a balance of $960 left, which is great (that’s been a long road). Another tenant typically pays $750 on the 5th and 19th. So they’re not late on $750, but they are late on the $375 they didn’t pay in the first half of the month (this is a special scenario that we put in place for them because they couldn’t pay all at the beginning of the month, so we increased their rent as a concession to being able to pay twice per month without creating more late fees for them… but they’re still late).

NET WORTH

The market significantly increased over the last month. We also had $28k come in as part of our insurance claim; our cash increased by $35k though, so there’s an additional savings in there. And even though we had large expenses on our credit cards, it’s still slightly down from last month.

BONUS STORY

Mr. ODA and I wait for Black Friday deals to purchase our iPhones. We typically purchase every 3 years. I usually bite for a new phone so that the camera is better, but I’m suspicious that Apple is sending updates to alter the clarity of photos on older phones. How can I take these BEAUTIFUL pictures for the first few months of having a phone, and then all my pictures are grainy suddenly? ANYWAY.

Walmart had a deal that you purchase the iPhone 14 on a payment plan, and they give you a $350 Walmart gift card. These are the deals we typically seek. Apple is still getting their full price for the phone, but Walmart is offering a deal to bring our net to $0. When you want to purchase the phone from Walmart, it asks you to log into your carrier’s account. For this phone, it’s Verizon. We spend hours trying to figure out who the primary account holder is and what that log in it. Verizon does it where you can create your own log in and see you phone’s data at any time, but to see the entire plan’s data, you have to be the account holder (makes sense, but complicates this particular instance). The primary account holder is my mom’s phone number. Who died in March. We finally get assistance with that and log into the account through Walmart. It brings up all the lines on the account, we select my dad’s number, and then it gets to step 2. It says they can’t verify the address on the account and we need to go to Walmart mobile desk in a store. I call Verizon. Can’t help. I call Walmart. They keep telling me to put the item in my cart, which isn’t how you purchase a phone. So no help.

I finally bite the bullet, and on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, march myself to the nearest Long Island Walmart. They can’t help because they need the phone in the store. I swear if I were at my Walmart in Kentucky, they would have helped me. It was actually at the point where I was going to risk waiting until Tuesday so that I could have my phone desk people help me. The Walmart employee actually wasn’t flippant or trying to blow me off; I believe he genuinely thought he couldn’t help me. What needed to happen was that he called their help desk people, and then he was the mediator to figuring out the address. I figure this because a Walmart customer service person transferred me to such a person, who said he’s not allowed to talk to me and has to have a Walmart employee talking to him on my behalf.

I gave up. Sunday comes. I hope that some “overnight” processing of information has magically cured the process. It didn’t. I call Verizon again. Some angel of a lady answered the phone and actually helped me more than I could have imagined. I told her that I wanted the Walmart deal because all the Verizon deals require me to change my plan to unlimited data. I let her know that I’ve already spoken to several people, and they keep trying to convince me that I get a “free” iPhone while my plan increases $30 per month in perpetuity (versus $23 per month for 36 months for the phone). She offered me a deal that equates to $5/month for the phone for 36 months. So I put 100x more hours into this than I should have, but it ended up working out in our favor!

February Financial Update

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Well, Mr. ODA didn’t like that I shared I didn’t know where our money was last month. They’re all kinds of Treasury accounts, and I’n just logging the transactions and leaving him to it. 🙂 I don’t have a lot of bandwidth these days, but I’m learning to juggle 3 kids and our finances.

PERSONAL FINANCES

We bought a new van this month. We’ve been wanting a new one for a while now. We bought our 2017 Pacifica in September 2020. It was a great deal, and it was a necessity as we were about to spend 7 weeks “homeless” and AirBnB/couch hoping. The car had some defects. We decided we’d keep an eye out for a newer version. Suddenly, Mr. ODA found a good deal on a 2020 Pacifica that had more options than we were actually looking for. We drove to Ohio about 36 hours later. They made us a good deal for our trade-in, and we went home with a new van! We put some of the purchase on two credit cards and then the balance with a personal check.

We’re currently paying close attention to credit card deadlines and our savings account. Where I used to pay a credit card bill almost after the statement closed so that it wasn’t hanging out there and I wouldn’t accidentally miss a deadline, I’m now leaving money in our savings account as long as possible. Our savings account is now earning 4% on the balance, so we’re seeing a significant amount of interest each month. I’m juggling managing our bills as close to their due date as possible, while also projecting future bills necessary since there’s a limit of 6 transfers out of the savings account per month.

All that was to point out that our credit card balances are high right now because of the van purchase, but the credit card statement hasn’t closed yet. Instead of paying the credit card balances down right now, the money is sitting in savings earning interest for 4-6 weeks between the purchase, to the statement closing, to the statement’s due date. More directly, we put $3,000 on one credit card for the van purchase. That was on 2/7. That statement, once it closes, will not have a due date until 4/20. That means that the money put on the credit card can sit in savings earning interest for about 70 days.

We also had to pay the initial payment for the restoration services on the rental that had a burst pipe. So while the insurance company sent us a check to cover the cost of this work, it’s still $17k sitting on our credit card, not being paid until the last minute. I should also note that our cash balance is inflated by about $50k because it’s the money from the insurance company that we’re waiting to pay the contractor as milestones are completed.

Had I seemed nonchalant about the plan? Because I’m definitely not. 🙂 I need to stay on top of how many transfers happen per month out of the savings account (while Mr. ODA randomly pulls money for investments), and not miss any deadlines and cost us interest charges or late payment marks on our credit. It’s stressful! Since we’re not doing anything that requires our credit to be pulled right now, it’s fine. If we were having our credit checked, having multiple cards nearly maxed out would be a problem. But we know we have the cash available to pay off all the credit cards if we needed to.

RENTAL FINANCES

I finally got through to someone on the issue with the improperly installed water heater. He says he submitted all the paperwork to send us a check for $200 to cover the plumber we paid to fix their issue. I haven’t seen any paperwork, nor have I received the check, but I’ll keep it on my radar and follow up in a couple of weeks.

I made all the decisions on the restoration of our flooded house. We’re expecting to hear a timeline for work to start next week, and then it’ll take about 40 working days to get the work done.

I paid a warranty for termites on another house. We had an infestation when we purchased the house, but we didn’t pay the warranty information. Our tenants found swarmers, and when we called to ask about treatment, they said they’d let us backpay the warranty and invoke that. We have a good relationship with this company and appreciated that offer, so we’re staying on top of the warranty payments now. The payment is $98 per year.

We received a surprise in the mail – the tenant had turned off the electric in the flooded house back on January 12th. The power company is supposed to notify me. I received an email on February 6th notifying me of an action on the account. So this was in my name from 1/12 to 2/1 for me to be billed $255 without my knowledge. Not to mention, there’s a bill hanging out there from 2/2 until the present that I’ll also get billed for. Mr. ODA sent our property management excerpts from the lease indicating that the utilities must be in their name for the entirety of the lease, that they’re responsible for this bill, and that they must get it back in their name immediately. We’ll see how that plays out.

RENTAL WORK

I picked up the keys from our property manager for the 3 houses I took over managing. I also worked on a rental here in town this week, which took about an hour including travel time, and I have another to work on later this week, which will be about 2 hours worth of work.

I sent a prospective tenant the pre-application we have, which he passed, so I sent him the application to submit. If all goes well, we’ll have that house re-rented with no vacancy period.

We have 3 leases that end at the end of April. We put a requirement that tenants give us 60 days notice, or that we give 60 days notice of any changes. That means that these leases need acknowledgement by the end of this month. So I ran the analysis on those 3 houses. We decided to increase the rent on 2 of them by $50 per month, each, and we’ll keep another house the same since it was increased last year. One house actually had an increase last year, but that house is well below market value, so we’re offering them to continue the lease with an increase because if they were to move out, we could get even more from the house based on it’s size and demographics. The 2 houses we’re increasing have a property manager, so she’s responsible for notification and signing an addendum before the end of the month. But once again, I need to manage the property manager and ensure we have action on time.

NET WORTH