trips

April Financial Update

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March is always a crazy month. Busy is an understatement. Baseball starts, which means we’re at the field 2-4 times a week. Our extended family has a lot of birthdays, which includes the 3 of our immediate family. We had a freak snow storm on St. Patrick’s day. The city went into gridlock. Everything was ice and cars were sliding down any hill anywhere in the city. The kids were off from school, and our dog hit a wall in health unexpectedly, and we said our goodbyes that day. It’s been quite the month.

This was a milestone birthday for me, and Mr. ODA threw a big party. That’s outside my comfort zone, but it was amazing. For that reason, I’m not going through March expenses because I really don’t want to know what he spent on me. It felt like we were spending left and right all month long, but our credit card payments have tracked as usual.

On top of all the usual things, the kids had a skating session in gym for 6 weeks. Volunteers come in for assistance, especially with the younger grades who need help even standing up. Last year, I did one session. This year, I couldn’t make it to the first one, but both kids expected me at all the other sessions, and so I did. I think it’s so cool that they get to do that at school. We also had an event for 1st graders one night, career day, and my volunteering to manage the lost and found.

We went on a spring break trip to Kansas City. I have a separate post about that coming later, but it was a pretty low cost trip, and we just explored the city.

RENTALS

A tenant moved out on April 1. She had been hemming and hawing for years about moving out because her child’s father was going to get a place with them, but things kept falling through. She finally gave a final notice, but then back tracked saying instead of January 31, she would stay through March. She did a great job moving out. I expected things left behind, or a mess of some sort, but it was great. The carpet is well past its useful life, so we’re replacing that. The walls are gross, so we’re painting everything. Actually, it turns out that painting a one story ranch is significantly easier and less overwhelming than any other house we’ve painted. Mr. ODA is worried about timing, but I’m feeling good about it. We lost a week to spring break, but from carpet measurement to install is projected to be less than a week, so that’s great. We also have an applicant in the wings that we’re working through right now, so hopefully we’ll be down for one month.

We finished our taxes, which included verifying expenses last year. We were able to claim some costs in full instead of depreciate them this year, so that was a nice way to recoup that improvement. I’ve been working on rent increases, and there’s a big batch of renewals that need notification before the end of this month.

NET WORTH

I’m still struggling getting a few accounts updated since I changed my phone number in November. So this is not a completely accurate representation of our funds, but it’s pretty close. I can’t get into my retirement account, which is a significant chunk of money, so that estimate could be off by a bit.

Our credit cards are a bit higher because we paid for carpet replacement in the rental. We also had to pay homeowners insurance on a few properties, and I always pay with credit card when I can so we get 2% back.

We also paid a chunk towards our new van loan. We had financed it to get $1000 off the purchase price. I have an earlier post that dug through those numbers to see why it was worth the few months of interest to get that price reduction.

Overall, our net worth went up from last month, so that’s a win.

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!