Author: Small Budget Retiremet Page 1 of 6

Here we go, ready for another exciting year on the path to financial independence. I usually do this post in the month of December rejoicing over the financial results of a great year. However, 2022 was not the greatest. I had two shitty tenants, and like all of us, inflation has made everything a bit more difficult for this family of six.

The Numbers

The growth prediction for our net worth in 2022 was $84,911. I anticipated a 20% increase back in December 2021. If you are interested in the breakdown, read my January 2022.

We had many different struggles this year. First of all, the pesky tenant who ended up being the lover of an unscrupulous lawyer. Once the tenant left there were about $2,000 in repairs including painting, carpet restoration, doorbell repair and some other random things along with about 35 hours of work that my wife and I did in 3 days.

What truly made this tenant swap expensive was a new air conditioning unit that added $3,500 to my yearly expenses. Unfortunately, every spring  the old unit would run low on gas. My family and I were happy paying about $120 every spring and that would cover the AC needed gas for the year, and saving ourselves the money of a new unit.

Unfortunately, the tenant was running the unit at 62 F during 90+ F days. Needless to say, the one charge of gas would not be enough; I don’t even think a brand new unit would have been able to keep up with that abuse.

The AC became a point of friction , and as a matter of fact, she tried to use the AC as a crutch to delay her moving-out date, claiming that “the unit was uninhabitable.” Thanks to my AC contractor, her tactic didn’t work. We got it fixed for the last 6 days she had left in the house and then we went ahead to replace the unit. The downside was that I had to pay $180 even when I knew I was going to replace the whole unit; that was better than keeping the tenant longer and messing up the schedule with the new people coming in.

More Problems…

Then there was my other tenant, who had endless problems with the plumbing of the house including the flushing of an adult diaper down the toilet.

I could truly write a book about this one but I will keep it short. This tenant was taking a night shift to make more money, leaving her two younger kids under the care of her other 2 teenager kids. Needless to say, that didn’t go very well. From the oven door gasket ripped off, the thermostat ripped off the wall and glued back on, vents full of food swept from the floors along with tooth flossing picks and candy corn…I am surprised we didn’t have an infestation of rats in the house. And of course….she wants her security deposit back, and wants to sue me.

This was an expensive flip. About $3,000 in repairs and about 60 hours of work.

In the meantime, the government has granted her the ability to move to a beautiful house where she will be paying $2,800 in rent and will continue driving her SUV Mercedes GLC whatever number it is. Unreal!

These two tenants I knew from the beginning were risky and I can confirm that in hindsight, that I was absolutely right. I consider myself lucky now that I got them out.

Our Short Term Rental

Our vacation rental did amazing. We got about 16K from renting through the summer and a few fall weekends. It sounds like a lot, but there are a lot of expenses involved such as having a cleaning service, management, repairs, and improvements that occur throughout the year.

We also had the bad luck strike with a humongous tree that fell right behind the house. It was going to cost $3,800 to get it removed and all cleaned up but due to a big misunderstanding on their original proposal we were able to get the job done for $2,000. Great price but still I was not expecting that extra expense.

We had our share of shitty people here too. One party claimed that the house was infested with rodents and requested a full refund without giving us a chance to get the property manager on the scene; they abandoned the house.

After getting our manager to the house we made sure to take pictures of the same things the guests were claiming to be mouse droppings. It turned out to be lint on the stairs and little marks on the wooden floor. Although, coupled with the movement of a handheld cell phone, the picture made it look like mouse scat.

Luckily Airbnb reviewed the case and after some time they sided with us.

We also have someone complaining about swimmer’s itch in one of the lakes, and a couple of people who were not very clean in the kitchen.

Other Expenses and Hurdles

Along with all those unexpected expenses we also had: the continuous orthodontic treatment bill for two of my older kids, summer camps, our own vacation in Michigan, some hefty car repairs, and affording the new cost of food. We especially felt the effects of inflation during the time my mom stayed with us for 4 months and my brother came to stay for two weeks.

But with all that, the numbers are still strong for the end of 2022. We got to increase our net worth to $527,926. That is $115,574 growth!!!! It’s unreal to think how much I have to work at my 9-5 to only bring in $105,000, which in reality is more like 68K after taxes and all deductions. That is a freaking 28% increase in our net worth despite a real estate market rather tamed during 2022 and a bearish stock market.

Predictions and 2023 Expectations

Well, on one hand I had a year of dealing with shitty tenants, but now I am simply enjoying my tenants. In one house I have a retiree with her adult working daughter and they are simply awesome. They are taking great care of the house and are very independent.

Our other rental always goes to a recipient public housing aid due to the area where it is. In previous years in an effort to maximize profit I have rented to participants with vouchers for 4 bedrooms. This time though, I decided to go with a 3 bedroom voucher participant. The amount of rent will be $100 higher than what it was but instead of having 6 people living in the house I will have only four and no children under 8; it is unreal how destructive children can be!!!

If everything goes somewhat as planned…my calculations tell me that our net worth should see an increase in the range of 95k-137k.

By maintaining this kind of net worth growth we should see our wealth cruising the million dollar line by the end of 2025. I am excited about that! I never imagined that I could someday consider myself a millionaire but we are getting closer and closer.

Happy Belated New Year 2023!

First off, let me put it out there… I am not an English native speaker. I don’t blog because I am hoping to write some awesome essay that would make Steinbeck or Jodi Picoult drop what they are doing and feel touched by my eloquent words. As a matter of fact, from now on I will proofread less and less so I can write and post more.

I want my story to inspire others to believe in themselves and realize they also can achieve FIRE. It has taken me 7 years to get here; actually 4 seriously planning FIRE- Financial independence, retire early. Before those four years I was trying to get somewhere in the middle of a very dense fog. 

Here we go with the post…

 Everything is great until it’s not. And we don’t know when the bad times will come knocking on your door. As a landlord, it seems like turbulent times always occur when your tenants decide to move. At that point all that charm they had on for the walk-through to gain your trust and get to live in your place is gone. Now all the sudden the property they couldn’t wait to move in is not good enough for them, and landlords are just evil people looking after themselves.

Well, this has been a year of great experiences and learning. It was certainly a stressful time but after all, it was a pretty easy transition from one tenant to another. My biggest lesson, which is always the core of my beliefs, is follow your freaking guts. My gut feelings have never been wrong when it comes to choosing tenants to work with.

Last year, after my tenant decided to break the lease around the month of October. I set off my wheels in motion to find someone else. I went through my usual tenant-finding protocol posting an Ad on Zillow and started screening people. I found this lady who seemed pretty nice except for the fact that she had a long and cumbersome story to follow. That is a big red flag right away! I liked the fact that she mentioned from the beginning that her credit score was a wreck, so there was nothing to hide there. However, she credited her poor score to identity theft, which made it seem more unusual. She was supposed to be rebuilding her life with this man who supposedly was just finalizing his divorce. A real estate lawyer who, according to her, makes half a million dollars a year. She didn’t know how unimpressed I am by these claims but I refrained myself from telling her “I don’t give a crap.” I let her have her glory..

After some back and forth I decided to give this lady a chance and run her credit. Holy crap!!! I have never seen such a messed up credit report. The funniest is that between the days of our conversations and the time when I ran her credit report there were two new credit cards opened. Like seriously?! Over 60k in debt, late payments and you are opening cards to buy from Victoria’s Secret?!

All these bundled up together in a nightmarish tenant prospect. Needless to say, I had to say “I can’t rent to you.” This was trouble in the making. I turned her down. 

It was late October and the idea of having the property vacant for the holidays was getting real. This lady was still calling me trying to talk up the lawyer she was with, and how his credit record was outstanding. So, against my gut feelings I decided to run his credit. Nothing really impressive. Just another high income earner with a shit load of expenses and debt, masked by some fancy sports ride. 

I decided to roll the dice and rent to these two. Besides the rent being on time, which it helped, it was always a weird vibe with her; just like the one I had from the get-go. Lots of stories justifying things that didn’t need explanation or I didn’t ask about…weird! Somehow the guy never moved in. Her kids didn’t look that well taken care of, fast food getting delivered to the house all the time, even in the middle of the night. The bitter smell of poverty took over the garage with a rancid cigarette smell as if someone was collecting the whole city’s ashtrays there… a nice 2018 SUV on the driveway, which of course, she had bought it because it was given to her for such a good price…just a total f-ed up situation unfolding.

Then, in the inside of the house the boxes never got sorted out. It was boxes all over for over 4 months, until she decided to empty all the boxes together on the floor and just kind of go from there. The house took the brunt of her negligence. The carpeting didn’t enjoy the putty, slime and whatever else the kids were playing with unsupervised. Really a sad situation. Everything had been renovated and move-in ready for her and her family and she just couldn’t manage her life.

Fast forward three months and she lets me know that she will have to move because the lawyer she was rebuilding her life with was not getting divorced at all. He was just having an affair with her. This didn’t sound very convincing but oh well. She wanted to make it seem like he cheated on her and she was a victim but now I realize that they knew very well what they were doing. I know this because her next landlord called for a reference and they had the same divorce bullshit scheme set up. Two pieces of shit in a pod, definitely deserving of each other.

Then, things got worse because the lawyer was trying to make me accept his alternative facts. According to this a-hole stains on a carpet were normal wear and tear and there was really nothing he should be responsible for.

When we got to the finish line of the moving day, she did move. Although, she had tried to create some delay by breaking down the air conditioning in the last few days before moving, fearing that she couldn’t find anything where to move. She was running the AC at 60 F during hot summer days of 96 F. Finally, the AC gave up and she threatened me with having to abandon the house because it was too hot for her to pack, which consequently would have put her days behind with the move. Thanks to having a great team of people I work with, that was fixed in just hours for just $150. I was actually on vacation out of state during all this, enjoying life with my family.

Finally she moved out. It took me 3 days to restore everything. My major concern was the carpet because it was old to begin with, but my carpet guy did an amazing job and restored it for just $200. Truly an amazing job. I couldn’t believe it. I really thought I was en route to replace it. I had to retouch the paint inside, Lysol the walls, wipe and clean everything, repainted the garage and I decided to replace the AC. I stretched the life of the AC by replacing its motor when we bought that house and moved in. It was time to get a new unit and have a peace of mind.

All in all, I spent $1,500 restoring this property, plus the AC. I put in about 36 hours of work. I am not happy about the time I spent restoring this house but if this is the worse I have dealt with…whatever! The tenants think they screwed me over. I received $29,950 in the form of rent  minus the $1,500 and the 3k for a new AC unit. That AC unit will last me at least 15 years. I have really nice tenants now who signed a lease for two years and I was able to rent for a bit more ( $150 extra a month in rent or $1,800 a year); better than W-2 job raises.So things are just awesome!

These were the worst people I have dealt with.  Absolutely, low-life scumbag trash. The lawyer was probably the worst of the two. A man, who feels entitled because of his profession and income, but who at his core is not worth a dime. No word, a liar, a cheat to his family.

The security deposit was of course a sticky point. I got to the point where I just wanted them out of my life; especially when I was about to have such a great family(tenants) coming in. Unfortunately, the lady was such a mess that she also ran a bill with the electric company that serves our community. Her “fiance” didn’t know about it. But this is how these shitty people operate. They try to run a bill with services at the end  or get them shut off so you find yourself without electricity or water so your work or inspections get delayed. They try to make you lose time. Of course, her partner in crime wanted me to still give him his security deposit claiming that he had nothing to do with it even when he was on the lease. He pushed his way around, threatened to sue me and make my life miserable. “I will drag you to court for months on end and write a pretty big bill” he squealed on the phone. He even threatened to sue me for defamation if I sought legal help. What a scumbag! I ended up getting a lawyer friend of mine to represent me. Long story short, it was all bullshit. He had to pay his bill and got the leftover of his money. Sorry, but that’s what happens when you got expensive hobbies like cheating on your wife and kids with a junkie (She had  some public court records as well). 

I hope I didn’t make your head spin with all this drama. The reason why I wanted to share this experience is because many people hesitate about getting into real estate thinking of these shitty people you have to deal with. For sure, at some point or another you will have to deal with them; no doubt. However, as you see, the outcome doesn’t have to be the end of your financial and wealth accumulation journey. As long as you do the right thing the shitty people will move on to continue screwing up their lives and you just keep going forward being more efficient and wiser with your money.

What I learned from this experience

If you are dealing with a sleazy lawyer and you know that you are acting within reason but they are trying to push you around, don’t waste time. Hand the case to a lawyer.

This piece of shit should have been brought to a small claims court with prime seats for his whole family to watch the show unfold. But you know what? Not worth my time.

I allowed this to go on for too long, fearing that my tenant would have groupies in the court system waiting to shred me apart. It was all bullshit. The law is the law. Once I got a lawyer representing me, it was the end of it and he paid what he was supposed to.

Always follow your gut feeling. If you are interviewing a candidate for your rental and they go on and on about random stories, with explanations and excuses that don’t seem to add up, just move on. If the beginning is rocky, the end will be a nightmare.

Having a real estate business is a risk management deal. You can wait until the tenant of your dreams comes to you risking having a vacant property, or you can rent quickly with a tenant that is somewhat OK or shitty and then manage the situation the best you can. I think that to our advantage technology and credit reports have helped us to avoid the worst of all, which is not collecting rent. The rest is a juggling act handling people and risk.

Remove yourself from the role of homeowner. Be your own employee. This has really helped me to manage my temper with the asssholes I have had to deal with. Every time I run into a situation with tenants, I think of myself as someone who works for a property management company. This allows me to have good customer service, de-escalate situations and keep the business running. For example, with this lawyer situation instead of going off and telling him to go and  f— himself, I would say something such as, can we try to find a reasonable solution to this? What would be the ideal solution for you? Of course, sometimes this is taken as a weak position by a-holes and they think they can take advantage of you, but all you have to say is “I am sorry I can’t do that.” Worst case scenario, that’s what you use lawyers for. 

It is critical to keep close track of expenses. There will be many times when you think to yourself “enough of this shit. I’m sick of dealing with these people.” Then you look at your numbers and you realize that your situation is not bad AT ALL!!! Getting 30K in rent and shelling out just 1.5K to keep the business running at a higher rate of income? Not bad at all.

I can’t think of any other business that will be so profitable as real estate! At least not at my reach as a simple mortal.

I have been a landlord for 7 years. My portfolio is not very impressive. I just have two long-term rentals and one short term out of state. My wife and I started as complete rookies just trying to move to a better neighborhood for the kids. Three years after that we started our planning towards FIRE. At the time, we were about 25K in the red, living from paycheck to paycheck. 

I remember listening to J. Money talking about networth and I would just laugh about how my networth was deep in the negative. It really seemed unreal the idea of making it into the one million dollar net worth group. Now a few years later, I am bewildered by the financial progress we have reached. Networth has passed the half-a- million threshold and a million dollar net worth is not a matter of “if” anymore but when. 

As we all know the stock market has taken quite a hit this year, otherwise I would be closer to the 600K! We’ll see where the year ends, but so far things are looking awesome.

I will be getting more specific about numbers in my next post. If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments. I am always willing to help if you have any questions. I am pretty open about what has worked for me. I don’t believe in getting rich quick. I don’t like high risk or high leverage investing. 

No gambling. And nope! I don’t do crypto. If you do, more power to you. 

I would love to hear ideas from any money obsessed nerd like me. 

It has been a whirlwind of doing and doing after our move. I estimated that by April the dust would have settled and we would be up and running in our new home. Well…almost there. The big hurdle was moving the pool and having someone to install it I wish I would have trusted myself doing the whole job because the company that did it, did a very crappy job with the leveling. I know that in a not very distant future i will find myself fixing it. I won’t be able to live with a pool where the water is off level for more than 2 inches. I am not an anal person( That sounds weird!) but these kind of things do perturb me. I am very mechanically inclined person and anything off like that makes me pretty much have nightmares about the consequences of something not being properly installed. Okay, sorry! I am going off topic here.
We have had few splurges since we moved to make our home comfortable, and enjoy it. Some of these expenses are a retractable automatic awning that covers the deck, some light fixtures, and the pool installation that comes with many expenses attached to it, like the electrical installation of an outdoor outlet and bonding of the pool to meet code requirements.
We could certainly have refrained ourselves from reinstalling the pool in our new place but with kids we simply love having the pool right in the back. We go nowhere. We pay for no pool passes for 6 people, we don’t have to deal with people’s craziness, drive, get ready, etc…and not to mention that having a pool when a world pandemic hits it’s the most amazing thing ever; I know those events never happen but just in case.

The retractable awning we got installed is such an amazing thing that I feel compelled to include it in this net worth update. Even when it was a big expense, we didn’t hesitate getting it after experiencing it at our old house. When we first moved to our previous home we thought that these awnings were outdated and simply an old people’s thing. We were bound to take it down and pretty much give it away. Well, then the summer hit, and we started using it. It was a life changing event. Very quickly we realized that while all of our neighbors were hiding inside from the heat and sun we were pretty much living outside all day long. Our house was cooler too because the awning would prevent the sun from reaching into great part of our first floor. When we moved, we considered taking it down and bringing it with us but then decided against it; we didn’t want to complicate our move even more. I had enough going on with the relocation of the pool. So, we decided to get a brand new SunSetter for our new place. It’s about 16 feet long and covers almost the whole deck. I can’t tell you what a great product this is! I am not getting paid to write this. If you like to enjoy your patio or deck, Sunsetter is simply the most amazing product you can have. Umbrellas are a pain in the neck!

Another big commitment although it did not require any upfront payment and should provide at least a 30% savings as we go on is our solar system. We decided to join the many families that are going solar and got our system installed by SunRun. We signed up for their lease option which requires no money down and provides some savings to the home owner, besides the benefit to the environment of not using fossil fuels( Or not as much). Through this program, SunRun owns the system and takes care of its maintenance and insurance while we reap some savings. Now, our electric bill will be paid mainly to SunRun and maybe a few bucks to the local electric company, since we are still hooked into their grid and their meter. Our bill was around $150 a month, and I am expecting now for that number to fall somewhere around $100. I am sure I’ll write about it once the system is turned on- We are waiting for the electric company to replace their meter.

Another big event in our lives was that finally we received part of our settlement for our car accident in 2020. The lawyers did a fantastic job and that is coming from someone who was extremely skeptical about getting a lawyer to litigate the case. These people went beyond my wildest expectations as far as compensation goes and I am confident that without them we would have walked out with nothing or in debt with hospitals and doctors. Thanks to them we were able to receive 50K in compensations against a 100K coverage, despite the 88K we owed for surgery and hospitalization, plus about 6 months of physical therapy. No money in the world is worth going through what we went through but we are grateful for the compensation this firm achieved for us.

MONEY!!!

Well, without any further adieu, the numbers!!!

For someone who is a high income earner this may be nothing. In the FIRE community there are tons of people who achieve FIRE fairly quick or who are able to reach great saving percentages of their salaries(50-60%). I am happy for them, but that’s not my case. I have a teacher salary, my wife stays home with the kids and we have 4!
So, for me, this is freaking unreal. Sometimes, I have to get a pencil and paper to do the math myself and confirm this is real. Five years back we had nothing but debt, even after becoming accidental landlords and when we had no idea about the FIRE movement we were living from paycheck to paycheck. We were afraid of loosing our tenant because we didn’t have enough in the bank to flip the property for a new tenant. It was stressful.
Today, per Zillow, we have $1,009, 098 in real estate assets, more than 100K in cash and almost 70K in tax sheltered accounts. I still have to work, and I am not retired but I get plenty of time to spend with my family and explore my own interests. I am relying more and more on others to do maintenance jobs for our rentals and life is simply great. I could not ask for a better life. Every day I wake up and I ask myself “is this real?”
This milestone is more than I ever imagined. I still remember myself counting all the money I had- $800 dollars- and packing up my suitcase before leaving my beloved Venezuela.

What’s Next?

We continue doing what we have been doing, which is to stick to the budget, increase the gap between our income and expenses, and keep investing. I recently increased my contribution to my 403B plan adding extra $100 per paycheck. I could max out this year but I want one more puzzle piece in our real estate endeavors.
We are looking into buying a vacation/short term rental property in Michigan but unfortunately we have been outbid twice by cash offers. The market is out of control even in rural communities. We want tiny slice of Pure Michigan near Traverse City. We love this area and we think that it may be our retirement spot. We have been camping and visiting the same spot for over ten years but we have never been in a position of buying a home there. We are currently bidding on a property but we won’t know until Wednesday (06-23). Wish us luck!
We will be camping in the area next Friday too. We super excited about it. Plus we will be able to check out some other hidden places we have not seen yet.

Anyway, that is what’s popping in my neck of the woods. I would love to hear how is this middle of the year for you and your FIRE journey status.

Now that the dust has settled and our move has happened successfully I finally find the time to write an update on our progress.

I will try to make this short and sweet. We ended the infamous 2020 with a net worth of 274K. The prediction for 2021 is about a 71K increase. 

Most of my net worth comes from real estate equity. After our move, we pushed our RE assets to 950K.

The housing market continues to show signs of strength and this spring should trigger some healthy increases as far as rent and house prices go.

Thanks to Mint I am able to track my net worth on a daily basis. This helps a lot! Especially when you are having a miserable day at work and feel like you have lost your purpose, which as a teacher we have had plenty of those moments this school year. If you are not using Mint and Personal Capital you are truly missing out. I highly recommend it. It does all the heavy lifting for you and it helps you make informed decisions about your finances. Both Apps are part of my financial GPS.

As it is today we are standing on a net worth of $308,890. That is an increase of $34,890 since January 1, 2021, which equals a 12% growth. That is already 49% of my 2021 goal. I thought I had surpassed the middle point of that goal due to a discrepancy I have in my notes and the data I am pulling from Mint and Personal Capital, but regardless, this is freaking awesome! I can’t even imagine what it will be when the best of the real estate season kicks in this spring and summer. And granted, my take-home pay is around 68K. So, money is definitely working for us.

That is in a nutshell where I am at.

If you want to know more about our move and details of how we made it happen, read on!

Buying a New Home

After going through almost a year of a pandemic-caused financial recession and observing an increased demand in the housing market for larger spaces we became part of the statistics. Being in a 3 bedroom house with no basement and 4 kids really pushed us toward our decision. I guess that if we had 2 boys and two girls that would’ve made things a bit easier, but having 3 girls and one boy complicated it all. Plus the added caveat that we have the potential complication of my mother staying again with us for a long period of time. We needed some extra space.

We were also at the point of finding another investment property. The options were buying another rental or buying a bigger home for us and turning our then current home into a rental. We chose the latter.

How did it happen?

We had about 40K in cash for a down payment but that would’ve wiped out our savings.

Thanks to a lender that I always work with he suggested we refinanced one of our rentals, pulling some cash out and with the historic low mortgage interest rates our payments would not change that much.

Our balance in that house was 117K, with a mortgage payment of $1,218. After pulling out a bit over 40K our balance became 165K and a monthly payment of $1,283. Those numbers include insurance and taxes.

In short, we bought a house and I didn’t spend any extra money. Well, we did, but if feels like I just moved money from one house to another and got to keep all my precious cash. Yes, my standing balance went up but the way I look at it is “ I don’t pay for it. My tenants do.” I appreciate that and I tried very hard to keep them happy by providing a living space well kept.

 We have had a lot of expenses in the new place. We were given credit for some of them and some other we are just paying for it. 

Some of the expenses were: 

Windows: We got credit for 9 windows(7K), but we paid for the rest 6.(4K).

Radon mitigation. We got credit for it (1.4K)

Some DIY canned lights for our living room: Under $200.

We splurged on a Sunsetter for the deck- that was a whopping 5k. Our old house had it when we bought it. We didn’t like the look at first but we loved its functionality. These awnings turn your patio or deck is an extension of your living space. It was a big expense but during the summer we really spend our days sitting outside while our neighbors have to go inside and hide from the sun. An umbrella for 6 people just doesn’t cut it. Plus, now the fabric designs are much nicer than what we had.
I am even considering replacing the fabric in the old house. I want my tenants to enjoy their summer, plus I like to keep my rentals close to selling conditions.

Then, last but not least, we have the big expense of moving our above ground pool. I took it apart myself. We’ll have to replace the liner and pay for the new install which comes to $1,046, plus permit $120, plus the electrical $300, plus $1000 to refill and fix the crater we left behind at the other house. That last expense should be tax-deductible since that house is now a rental.

We also decided to get a beautiful reclining couch for $3K. Not very frugal decision but our old couches had taken the beating of 4 kids for 13 years and they were literally ripped and losing their inners. We could never sit all together because they were not big enough. Now we have an awesome family lounging area where we gather, chat, watch movies, enjoy each other and that has tremendous value for us.

I know. Not very frugal, and it is a lot of money but we don’t pay for pool memberships or go anywhere in the summer other than our yard and forest preserves around. We usually take one trip to Michigan in the summer, and one to Wisconsin to drop our older girls at camp and the rest is a daily yardcation all summer long. We truly enjoy our house.

So…the tab please! After all these are put together we have spent about $13,666, plus the couch that we’ll pay in 3 years with zero interest.

Part of the reason behind these scandalous purchases has been the stimulus money we have been receiving. We really didn’t need it, more is coming and I just want to enjoy my house and my family. It seems like I always make everything nice for my tenants. I fix our house and instead of staying and enjoying it we just move. So now, we are good to go. 

Today is the first day we will enjoy 70 degrees around Chicago and I just can’t wait to enjoy our awesome house this summer. After all, FIRE has no purpose if you can’t enjoy the journey to it. Right?

How about you? Any big financial movement this 2021? Any splurge? I would love to hear about any of your new plans or goals for ‘21 down below.