FIRE

Hello, World!

AlexLeave a comment

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

Hello, 2025!

AlexLeave a comment

As usual, it’s been a while.

I had a whole post written up detailing my hopes and goals for 2024, but for some reason I never actually posted it. What a waste. To sum it up and keep it short, I more or less smashed those goals. Instead of writing out what they were, here’s where I currently stand instead:

  • 5 rental properties
  • $1250/mo. in rental cash flow
  • $22,000 in “bad” debt (not including car loan)

My plans for 2025 are simple. I’m going to take a step back from acquiring rentals this year, focus on paying off the remainder of our debt, and build a sizeable emergency/retirement fund. So, here’s my short list of what I want to accomplish:

  • Be 100% “bad” debt free
  • Max out our IRAs
  • earn $1500/mo. in rental cash flow (via rent increases)
  • Have a $10,000 emergency fund (currently at $5,500)

Since I’ll be taking a step back from rentals this year, I’ve decided to go ahead and start learning to day trade. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and now that I can work from home with flexible hours, it seems silly to not take advantage of the opportunity. I started last week and had some decent results, although I was only trading with 1 share at a time with really cheap stocks as a test run. Hopefully it wasn’t a fluke and I can continue my winning streak. We’ll see.

Here we go!

– Neurotic

Well, I Have 5 Rentals Now!

AlexLeave a comment

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.

AlexLeave a comment

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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I Got a New Job AGAIN. This Time, It’s The Last.

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Last month I talked about how I was trying my hand at landing a new job at an actual company rather than continue to work for an AML consulting firm. The bad news is that I didn’t get the job at the company that I so desperately wanted to work at…

But the good news is that I did get hired by their direct competitor, whose actually #1 in their respective space, and whose benefits and culture are pretty much exactly the same, and man am I loving it so far!

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

AlexLeave a comment

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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