Friday, January 13, 2017

2016 Review: Rental Property #2 (Colorado)

This is my second property review for 2016. In this post I would like to follow a similar method to what I did with my Missouri Property: a thorough, yet to the point, review of my Colorado property's rental performance in 2016.

I'll try to review the property's cash flow, mortgage paydown, capital appreciation, general thoughts/advice I have, and anything else pertinent to the property.

I hope this post is helpful for those looking to get into real estate as an investment, and I imagine it will be helpful for me as well.  Without further adieu, here is what happened with my Colorado rental property this past year:




Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Income/Expenses: December 2016

One of my favorite posts of the month! It's very personal and helps keep me extremely accountable!

I think it takes a little bit of guts to share your income and expenses openly with the world. But that said, I think there is value for both of us in reading this post. I will do a similar post every month.

General Thoughts on this Month: This was a great month for income, thanks to a record in Passive Income, in which all dividends were reinvested, which really makes everything else look good as well (savings rate, % of expenses covered by passive income, etc).  In reality, it was pretty normal month if dividends are removed.  

As usual in December, it was pretty expensive due to the Holidays, but that happens every year and we are ok with it actually.  In fact, if you remove housing, rental property mortgage costs, and gifts/donations, our total expenses actually came in under $2,000 this month.  But when you add back in those three categories, expenses balloon to over $7,000!

All of that said, listed below is a detailed display of all income and expenses for the month of December 2016.  

Saturday, January 7, 2017

2016 Review: Rental Property #1 (Missouri)

In this post I would like to do a thorough, yet to the point, review of my Missouri Rental Property's performance in 2016.

I'll try to review the property's cash flow, mortgage paydown, capital appreciation, general thoughts/advice I have, and anything else pertinent to the property.

I hope this post is helpful for those looking to get into real estate as an investment, and I imagine it will be helpful for me as well.  Without further adieu, here is what happened with my Missouri rental property this past year:






Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Goals for 2017: Bigger, Better, Bolder!

In this post I will highlight my financial goals for 2017.  I italicize 'financial' intentionally, as I want to emphasize that the following list of goals are only related to my finances...hence my financial goals.  It'd be a sad life if these were my ONLY goals for 2017! :)

That said, I think it is important to have goals (as many of us bloggers do!) for all areas of our lives, and I talk a little bit more about the importance of goals on my Passive Income Goals page.  At that page you can also find my 2016 goal, as well as some of my future projected goals (2018, 2019, 2026....next two years and when I turn 40.)

My goals post is actually one of my favorite posts of the entire year, believe it or not.  There is something very refreshing about having a new 'start' and diligently laying out your plan for what success looks like. In the end, that's what goal setting is all about isn't it? Defining what success looks like in a particular area of your life.  Your goals are the specifics, the high-view plan, of what success looks like.

One thing I personally like to do with my goals is prioritize them, by number.  So if there is only one goal I can accomplish, it should be the one at the top of the list, and then the #2, and so on. This indicates specifically where I should focus MOST, and what I want to achieve the MOST (to consider it a 'success', etc).

Finally, you'll note that the subtitle of my blog now says I am 31 years old. Another year down, another year older!  We only have one life to live so let's make it the best. Without further adieu, here are my financial goals for 2017. Some of them are pretty bold: