Financial Freedom

Hello, World!

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In my usual fashion, I’m 15 minutes late with Starbucks. Except that 15 minutes is more like 15 months. Or something.

Anyway — also as usual, there’s lots of new developments to report. I’m a bit lazy though, and so I’ll keep it simple:

  • Still with the same company so far. Recently passed the two year milestone, which is nice! I’m not sure of my exact salary, but it’s somewhere around $113k I believe. My partner is sitting somewhere around $105k. Nice tidy sum together if I do say so myself.
  • Our emergency fund is finally full at $20k, which covers well over 6 months of our mandatory expenses! Now every extra dollar goes toward investments and/or paying down debt.
  • Speaking of debt, we’ve got about $39k in bad debt left — most of it was accumulated from remodeling a home that I purchased for my mother in the past two years, so it is what it is. It’s all 0% interest though, and we’re slowly chipping away at it.

I told myself that I’d take some time away from investing in real estate to focus on the market. Well, I did that, but after ~2 years spent remodeling my mother’s new house and sitting on the real estate sidelines, I’ve got a hell of an itch. I ended up recently finding a new property to pick up, so I close on rental #6 in a month! Woohoo! The numbers look really good — if I’m guesstimating correctly, it should cashflow somewhere around $650/mo. ($450/mo. after setting aside $200 for maintenance and whatnot), and should finally bring me right to the $2000/mo. in rental income mark. Kind of hard for me to imagine considering I started my real estate journey almost ten years ago now. It’s been a slow process, but it’s definitely been worth it and I don’t regret a thing, even though I’ve played it relatively safe and probably could’ve hit a few more home runs than I have. Hey, a win is a win!

I’ll make a post again soon talking about updated FIRE numbers and whatnot. For now, I just wanted to post a little somethin’ somethin’ since it’s been so long.

Talk soon!

Got a Raise and SMASHED a Goal Already!

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2025 has been full of surprises so far… both politically and financially. Focusing on the good (aka financial) surprises, we’ve already smashed our $10,000 Emergency Fund goal, and now have $15,000. We’ve decided to work towards $25k, as that would cover 6 months of expenses for us, and even a full year of expenses once we’ve paid off our debt obligations, which we anticipate doing this year.

Also, my partner got a sizeable raise at work, going from $82k/year to $105k/year. Insane. Together we’re grossing $210k/year from our W2 jobs alone, and thanks to living in a LOCL area and have inexpensive hobbies, we’re able to sock away a good deal of our income. For example, here’s a quick breakdown:

Take Home (after 401k and health insurance payments): $11,450
Needs (debt payments, mortgage, utilities): $3,385
Total Leftover: $8,065

We really only ever spend about $2,500 on discretionary expenses, which also includes our food budget, so that means we’re still able to save over $5k a month. And that doesn’t even include the extra income from our rentals. And once we pay off some of our debts this year, that’ll free up even more income.

Safe to say… I’m feeling restless now. Having this level of income really opens up a lot of opportunities, and allows you to take on more risk for more rewards. This year I was going to focus more on investing in stocks rather than real estate, but I’ve decided to lean in a bit more aggressively into real estate. I’d like to pick up 2 more rentals this year to hedge my bets against a volatile market this year. I’ve already got a couple of rentals in mind that I could pick up, so now it’s just a matter of timing.

Talk to you soon!

– Alex

Well, I Have 5 Rentals Now!

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That’s it. That’s the post. Because I’ve come to realize that I suck at keeping a blog updated, even though so much has happened in such a short amount of time…

  • I picked up 2 rentals just these last few months, in January and February of 2024.
  • I’m now making $1550/mo. in pure cash flow from rental income, and that’s after all expenses and setting aside $200 per property each month for future repairs and maintenance.
  • I went from making $65k/year in 2022 to $90k/year in 2023 and now $105k/year in 2024. Safe to say that I’m shoveling all the money I can into paying off debt AND acquiring more property. Coupled with my partner’s $85k/year, we’re living very comfortably given our choices!
  • My partner also decided it was time they went to college, so that’s what they’re personally working on. Hoping that shiny new degree helps catapult their salary, lol.

It took me a long while to get here, but I’m so happy! Still in a bunch of debt, but that’s been slowly going down over time, and now I have a way to really kick things into high gear. I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to dedicate the rest of 2024 to pay off as much debt as possible, or if I want to focus on picking up another property or two. Perhaps I’ll just go with the flow and work on paying off debt, but if the right opportunity comes along, I’ll seize it. I think that’s best.

Until next time!

Alex

Happy New Year! 2023 Goals, and How I Ended 2022.

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I wish I could say that I ended 2022 by completing all the goals I had on my list, but to be frank, I’m not even sure I had made goals for the year. Either way, I definitely know that I didn’t achieve my ongoing goal of tamping down debt as aggressively as I had wanted, but that’s mainly because (1) I ended up purchasing a rehab project, (2) my partner traded in their car for something newer and more practical, and (3) we were paying a good of a friend’s rent for the entire year. So, here’s a quick review of my 2022 finances, plus the goals I’d like to achieve in 2023.

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Reflecting On My First Four Years as a Landlord

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I purchased my first rental property in June 2018, and had it rented out by November of that year — almost four years ago to the date. I was 24-years-old with big dreams of creating my own little real estate empire, and a back-of-the-napkin plan on how I’d amass 25 rentals and retire ASAP. Here’s looking back to how I thought things would go, versus how they actually did.

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New House, New Life! (And New Career Plans?)

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I can’t remember if I posted about it, but late last year my partner and I decided to do something crazy and buy a house. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the wild housing market was just getting started, and we got pretty lucky to snag the place we did: a 3 bedroom, 2 bath Cape Cod style home that was severely outdated and needed quite a bit of work.

So far we’re about 1/3 finished with the renovations. There’ve been a few hold-ups, but we’re finally getting things done. And while that’s been happening, I’ve been getting used to living on my own entirely alone with my partner and our dog. Though to be fair, it’s been pretty easy. Living at home was nice and all, but I really enjoy having my own actual space where I can truly feel like an adult. Plus, our setup is super cool.

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Progress Report #4 | Long Time No See!

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Man, if I thought it was a long time since I updated this blog the last time I posted, then it’s definitely been forever this time around.

I’ll keep it short and sweet, mostly because I’m lazy and, as a wise man once said, why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

Not much has really changed since my last post a little over a year ago. I mean, I graduate with my Bachelor’s that summer, I fell in love, got my heart ripped out, and then somehow managed to fall in love again this time with the person who I’m absolutely confident is my soulmate, but who’s keeping track? Definitely not me. Besides, this is a finance blog. So, let’s talk finance.

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Progress Report #3 | I’m Officially a (Successful?) Real Estate Investor!!

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It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this blog with anything worthwhile, but today I can officially say that I’m a real estate investor! Well, I mean — I could have said that quite some time ago, but, whatever.

Anyway!

So, the rental property that I purchased last year in June — I finally finished the refinance process! As of March 26th, 2019, the personal loan that I took out to purchase the home is paid off and I’ll instead have a nice, low mortgage in its place: a change of $346 to $122 per month! Here are the financial details to break things down on a monthly basis:

Rental Property #1
Rent: $550/mo
PITI: $220/mo
Maintenance Fund: $130/mo
Total Cash Flow: $200/mo

Not a bad deal!

Now I’m working on saving up for my second rental property. I’ve paid off all my credit card debts and the only thing I have left to make monthly payments for (out of my own pocket) is for my car, which should be paid off by the end of the year. Things are moving a lot slower than I’d like, but regardless, I think I’ve managed to put myself in a pretty nice position.

I’m also looking into moving my meager Roth IRA over to M1 Finance instead, which I’ve been using for the past weeks. I really like it. I’ll probably make a post of that in the future.

Lastly, before I make any more major purchases (i.e., another property) I want to save up a small $3,000 safety net. I’ve only got $500 saved up so far, so… yeah, it’s gonna take a little while since my paychecks aren’t exactly the biggest, haha. But hey, that just means I’ll have plenty of time to let my credit recover! Taking out the 19k personal loan to purchase the property, having to get my credit ran to get insurance rates and to refinance the loan, and also opening up an additional credit card caused it to drop from 803 to 750. Yikes.

From here on out, I’m going to keep track of my general financial health in each progress report! I don’t think I’ll include my physical “assets” such as properties, vehicles, etc. since their worth fluctuates a lot. Instead, I’ll include any money that is generated from them!

NP.

Financials | March 2019
Accounts
Savings: $500
Stocks: $188
Retirement: $2818
Income
Employment: $1500/mo*
Rental: $200/mo
Stocks: $0

*I purposely underestimate my monthly employment income due to me taking up to 6 unpaid days off per month for my illness.