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The Kids Are Doomed!

September 22, 2023 by Lazy Man 1 Comment

Let’s face it. Kids are financially doomed these days. If you are under 25, maybe even under 30, you might as well give up.

YOLO!

Or, to put it another way:

“Our generation sees the world
Not the same as before
We might as well just throw it all
And live like there is no tomorrow
…
The official view of the world has changed
(In a whole new way)
Live fast ’cause if you don’t take it
You’ll never make it
“

There’s only one problem. That quote is from The Offspring song, “Nitro (Youth Energy),” released in 1994 – almost 30 years ago!

If you are under 25 or the parent of someone who is. Don’t give up!

I’m here to give you hope.

Why Kids are Doomed Today

A friend of mine passed along this MSN article.

I’ll summarize the main points for those who don’t want to read it.

A TikToker named Gen X Jess is the mother of 25 and 28-year-old kids. She’s made a video about how frustrated she was about her kids’ financial difficulties. The kids have had to deal with rising housing and health costs. Let’s look at the bright side for a second: Student loans are not mentioned in the article. That’s the triple whammy for kids nowadays.

As the mother explains, working hard and getting a good job doesn’t get you what you want because the world has changed. She explains that when she was a kid, she struggled too, but knew it was temporary.

The TikTok went viral with millions of views and tons of comments, so it’s safe to say that it struck a chord.

The kids are definitely doomed.

Finding a Solution

There’s no silver bullet. Well, perhaps the government could fix a bunch of things, but no one will hold their breath hoping for that to happen.

Instead, I suggest looking into the following:

  • Learn Financial Literacy

    If you are here, you’ve already taken that first step. Learning about personal finance is so important.

    I’ve been writing about my financial journey since 2006, when my net worth was probably under $50,000. I realize no one wants to read three thousand articles. I should write a more concise money journey, but in the meantime, I wrote this FIRE Hero Journey

    You are in luck if you parent a kid in preschool through high school. You’ve got time to help them build great financial habits. I’ve created Kid Wealth because kids are going to need financial literacy to navigate this changing world. Kid Wealth is a one-stop financial literacy resource for parents and kids. You’ll find book reviews, games, apps, and even television shows to help kids become money experts.

  • Frugality is the Key

    I grew up in a family where my mother would clip coupons. She’d then shop at double coupon places and pair them with the right sales so that the products were free or maybe a dime. I don’t think I would call her an “extreme couponer,” as you may have seen in some shows. She just knew how to work the system.

    Frugality is just the world I grew up in. My mother still has the same couches she had when I was a baby. Of course, things were better constructed back then, but that’s truly “Buy It For Life.”

    I realize this isn’t possible today, but there are a lot of deals out there. For example, I can get free fast food and save money at McDonalds using the app.

    There are a billion ways to save money on stuff. You can Google “Save Money On…[X]” and get some websites immediately. With ChatGPT and generative AI, you could ask it how to save money on any big purchase you have coming up, such as buying a car. You may have to do additional research, but you’ll start with 80-90% of the best solution.

    A frugality mindset can go a long way. If you are young and frugal, you can…

  • Take Advantage of Compound Interest

    Compound interest is a river. You want the current working with you rather than against you. The housing market going up a lot every year is an example of the current working against you.

    If you have time to invest and get the current working with you, it can neutralize that housing market working against you.

  • Hack That House

    After college, I lived at home for a little bit. I don’t remember it being too bad. It was kind of comfortable. Of course, that doesn’t work for every family dynamic. After that, I moved into a small apartment with a couple of friends. It was a nice place, so it felt like a nice upgrade. We lived together for maybe five years. Then he bought a condo, and I lived with his girlfriend/fiancée for a year.

    Unfortunately, there was never a good buying opportunity from when I left college in 1998 to 2004. I bought at the top of the market, and prices crashed in the next 3-5 years with the Great Recession. In hindsight, it would have been best to continue renting and buying at a lower price when that crash occurred.

    It doesn’t look like the crash is coming soon. It feels like 2003 when it might be years away. There’s just too much demand and not enough supply. As soon as supply becomes available and/or interest rates get better, there will be people with the money on the sidelines looking to buy.

    In the meantime, there are several housing hacks, such as living in an accessory dwelling unit or a similar tiny house. You can have roommates as I did. Some people may be able to buy a condo and have roommates to help pay the mortgage. That worked with my friend and fiancée when they had me as a roommate.

    There are numerous articles on house hacking. I’ve been thinking about writing a guide myself.

Maybe the kids are indeed doomed.

I like to be a little more optimistic. This is how kids will learn to be more resourceful. I had a friend who used to say, “I like when gas gets to $5.00. That’s when people start to make changes.” This was back in 2009 when Tesla had just released its first cars.

I’m encouraged to see Generation X recognize the difficulties. That means they may offer help if they can. Unfortunately, they (we) are in the sandwich generation, which may also mean helping older generations.

What do you think? Are the kids doomed?

Filed Under: Kids Tagged With: Kids

Passive Income Update: August 2023

September 17, 2023 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

Happy September! It’s been super busy here with the kids going back to school. I feel like I’m chasing my tail. I have been trying to get this article out for several days now.

It feels like August was a billion years ago. The vacation that we took at the end of the month broke up the month. I shared many pictures in that article, but I have more photos here. With the kids in school mode now, reflecting that they were in camps in August is weird.

One kid was in cooking camp while the other was in sailing. I love the idea of cooking camp, but it’s only three hours long. I drop off the kid and get back with only about 2.5 hours before I have to get him again.

We went to a Barbie party. My wife went all-in and got costumes for the kids so they could Barbie’s dog and horse. I had a pink shirt, so it was easy to dress like Ken. I’m not a big Barbie fan, but my wife puts up with boys in the house (I’m just an oversized boy). It’s only fair that we indulge her stuff sometimes, right?


Barbie had a special premier showing at a local theater.

The Cub Scouts had a Red Sox day at Fenway, so my kids got to go on the field!! They complained about getting up a little early. They have no idea how special that is.

We went to so many beach concerts that the kids got annoyed with us. They always had a great time, but overcoming that initial inertia to get them out was challenging.

We went to a fundraiser at the Newport Tennis Hall of Fame. Some people are looking to restore and open up a historical theater. We also went to a steak dinner fundraiser for the Elks or a similar group. I forgot to be honest. The facility is close to our house, but usually members only except for a couple of days a year.

We went to a Jamaican Polo team fundraiser. We have no affiliation with them, but it seemed like a fun thing to do. It was at the Top of Newport, a rooftop bar no one knows about. Maybe it’s just too expensive for the general public. It’s a great atmosphere in the summertime. They hired someone to play the steel drums, which always reminds me of vacation.

(That’s a lot of fundraisers for one month! Perhaps more than we’ve had all year.)

We went to the annual Fool’s Rules race. I had wanted to go for years, but we always missed it due to something else scheduled. The Fool’s Rules race is where a group of people (usually 2 or 3) build a sailboat and sail it in a race. They have two hours to make it, and it can’t use typical boat parts. So people often use things like 5-gallon water jugs or insulation foam that you can buy at Home Depot. There are some other rules, such as not having a motor. Some of the stuff can be constructed at home before the race. It’s fun to see what crazy things people are coming up with.


My oldest soon with a Fools Rules sailboat in the background.

Before leaving that vacation, we ended our time in Newport with their annual Salute to Summer at the local navy base. It combines a carnival, a concert, and a fireworks show.

Well, now you know why I didn’t write as much as I had hoped. Remember that all that doesn’t involve the big vacation at the end of the month, that essentially doubles the activities. I’m tired when I think about it, but if we don’t plan this stuff, we tend to blow the day on an electronic device a foot in front of our faces.

Let’s start the new and improved Passive Income report. I’ve streamlined this a bit to make it a faster, easier read. I’ll continue to trim it down through the year.

I used to call it alternative income, but that idea didn’t catch on as it did when I used it back in 2008. Everyone loves “passive income” better. If you are a new reader, you’re going to want to refer to my Alternative Income FAQ as you may have some questions about the math that I’m going to use in this post.

The way I calculate these numbers requires that little explanation. I do things differently to show the journey. Following the progress keeps me motivated. For example, we only have a little passive income from our rental properties. We still have mortgages to pay off. Instead, I calculate the percentage of equity we have to show where we are on that journey. Over time, the bank owns less of the properties, and we own more. There will be no mortgages when this number reaches 100%, and all that rental income can be used for living expenses.

When calculating the percentage of rental income, I take the rent (minus estimated expenses) and apply it to the portion of equity we own. Think of it like you and a friend owning a property 50/50. This would be how you’d handle it, with each splitting the profits at the end 50/50. If your friend is the bank and it owns 80%, you should only count on 20% of that net rental income. We used to be in that 20% range, but now it’s closer to 75%.

Lazy Man’s Passive Income

Passive Income Pyramid
My Passive Income Pyramid

I categorize our passive income into three primary sources that are represented mainly in my passive income pyramid. For this report, I ignore the bottom section, “career/job,” – that’s not passive at all. (I have some income in that area, but that’s not the focus of this report.) I combine dog-sitting and blogging into one section of my “somewhat active” income. They are passive because I can make money even when not immediately tending to them. I can do other money-making activities while I board dogs. When I’m on vacation, some blog money still comes in. I combine real estate and investment income as their separate primary sources of very passive income. This way, if you want only to count those, you can do that.

New for this year, my passive income will only be 50% of my blogging and dog-sitting income, 80% of my real estate income, and 100% of my dividend income. That rewards types of income that are truly passive and punishes my quasi-passive sources like blogging.

1. Blogging + Dog Sitting Income

August is a high-demand month for dog boarding. Unfortunately, the month started with uncertainty. The zoning officer said I couldn’t run Rover.com boarding out of my home because it is in a residential area. I convinced him that he had misinterpreted town law, but he applied a different ordinance intended for dog ownership that limits three dogs on a property.

We went on vacation at the end of the month. That limited time that I could board dogs as well. Overall, we did about half the business we would have done during a normal summer month.


Kids playing cornhole at the Elks steak fundraiser

Blogging did reasonably well in August. Other bloggers like my Running Out of Life article and spread it around to their readers, and that helped with traffic. For the first time in a long time, I missed a whole week of blogging while we were on vacation.

Speaking of blogging, we got a solid rebound in July. Blogging is still a tough business, and I did quite well to get a rebound in a month when I didn’t write much.

In July, “dogs and blogs” combined for $7,437.82. In August, it was:

Total Blogging + Dog Sitting Income: $4,478.82


The blue line is the monthly income. The red line is the 3-month average.

That may seem like a significant drop, but our yearly average is $5,673.26. It’s lower than that, but reasonable for being on vacation.

My kids help with the dog sitting. My 10-year-old is extremely good with dogs at this point. He can feed them, let them out, and play with them in the yard. He’s spending more time in front of the clients as a helper at pick-ups and drop-offs. My 9-year-old was a little slower to develop dog skills, but he’s carved out a household niche catering to the smaller dogs – he loves them.

Their help means I can pay them a legitimately earned income (a percentage of the overall dog-sitting income). Because the income is earned, they can save money in their kid Roth IRAs, and it will be money that they’ll never pay tax on. Kids should start a Roth IRA as soon as possible.

2. Rental Property Income

The real estate market is heating up again. There’s no supply and a lot of money sitting on the sidelines. I think we’re going to high prices for some time. I used to be very happy about this because it means we have more money, even if it’s on paper. However, now I see so many people being locked out of the real estate market, and it’s hard.


Beach Concert Part 1

We bought our primary residence for around $400,000 in 2011, and Zillow has it priced at nearly $900,000 now. That’s a lot of paper net worth we can’t easily access.

In any case, Zillow thought our properties were worth a little more than they were last month. We lowered our mortgage/liability on them like we do every month.

Last month, we owned 78.44% of our properties, but this month we own 78.70%. This is always a small change. Since January, we’ve gained more than $50,000 in equity. It’s safe to say that our landlord job is paying well.


Beach Concert Part 2. Lifeguards abandon their chairs at night, so kids can take them over.

Suppose we owned both rental properties with no mortgages (100% of the equity). In that case, we’d make about $2,218 a month after insurance, property taxes, condo fees, and estimated condo maintenance. The $2218 number is specific, but that’s how the rents came out, with the fraction accounting for the condo maintenance.

If you multiply our rents of $2,218 by the amount of equity we have, 78.70%, you get $1,745/mo. in estimated passive-ish income. Last month it was $1,739/mo. They say slow and steady wins the race. It’s hard to get more slow and steady than $6.

When I started tracking rental property income this way (January 2017), we only owned 36.4% of the properties with lower rents. The math worked out to $1,174 of passive income back then. In almost seven years, it grew a ton. We sold off a property to invest it in the stock market and still have about 50% more income after expenses.


The background is the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It’s one of the few grass tennis courts in the country.

Eventually, these properties should bring about $25K-30K after expenses. Rent is inflation-resistant as it’ll rise over time. That means that even though this is $25K in today’s dollars, it will still have that buying power in the future.

At some point, I won’t want to manage properties. One option is to let my kids do it and pay them well for the help. They are at least ten years away from that, though. If that doesn’t work out, I might invest in a different real estate platform. I’ve heard some good things about Ark7.

Total Rental Property Income: $1,745

3. Dividend Income

For this section, I look at our stock market investments. I assume we could earn a 2.5% dividend yield on those investments. That assumption is a conservative number that helps us think about what kind of cash we can expect. Getting that 2.5% number should be easy, as we could put all the money in a high-dividend ETF. For example, the high-yield ETF, iShares Core High Dividend ETF (HDV), currently pays a 3.96% yield.

Most bloggers use the actual dividends they earned that month. I have too many accounts, and I’m too “Lazy” to add up their dividends. Even if we aren’t getting the 2.5% number now, we could move the money from growth to dividends if we needed to live off the cash flow. A vast majority of our money is in retirement accounts, and cash flow isn’t essential to us now. I also combine all the taxable and retirement account numbers. It’s too much work to separate them.


Red Sox game! I didn’t include the picture with the kids on the field because I got Lazy when editing their faces out.

We continue to get a profit-sharing check since I bought (a lot of) a company. The company is doing well, and they occasionally give me an extra profit-sharing check. The investment income from this is essentially the same as dividend income. It is taxed differently, but for this report, it makes sense to group all stock ownership in this bucket.

The stock market has been dull lately. It goes up and down a little bit. Over the last month, it didn’t move much. Last month, this number came out to $4187, and this month, it was down to…

Total Dividend-ish Income: $4,150

In January 2017, the dividend income was at $1,180/mo. We’re still around $50,000 a year – enough to live reasonably well, especially if we paid off our mortgage.

For the 113th month in a row (?), we’re looking into estate planning, but they gave us a lot of paperwork to do before we can move forward. I need to contact them and see if there’s some way around it.

Adjusted Passive Income

I used to combine real estate and dividend income into “very close to passive income.” However, now I add up the 50% dogs/blogs, 80% real estate, and 100% dividend income. That gives a more accurate number of what’s truly passive.

Dog/Blogs: $4,478.82 – Adjusted to $2,239.41
Rentals: $1,745 – Adjusted to $1,396.00
Dividends: $4,150 – Remains at $4,150


Dogs/Blogs Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line

Total Adjusted Passive Income: $7,785.41

Last month it was $9,297.11. The numbers are down, but I don’t mind. I look at the long-term, and it’s going in the right direction.

This ~$7,785 is nearly $95,000 of passive-ish income annually. That’s almost exactly what all our necessary expenses comes out to. Eventually, the two biggest expenses (mortgages and education costs) will disappear, and we’ll make much more than we need. That means we’ll be able to spend on a lot more fun stuff.

It’s incredibly useful to have different income streams. As making money from blogging becomes more difficult, dog boarding income has grown to supplement it. For a long time, real estate didn’t grow much at all; then, in the last couple of years, it grew a ton. The stock market grew for over a decade from 2010 to 2021 but had a slight setback last year. This year it’s recovered. When something goes down, it seems another thing jumps up.

I’ve been writing for months that dog boarding will probably go down. I felt like we’d travel more or there may be more competition. I didn’t expect the town to target me specifically and attempt to shut me down. Hopefully, it will go down gradually. I will try to be positive because with the other areas coming up, I can tread water for a while.

The chance of all the income streams falling on hard times is low, but anything is possible. If we had another event like the Great Recession in 2008, they’d all be impacted quite a bit. In that case, we’d have to rely more on active income that I’m not reporting here. We might also have to rely on savings for a while.


Kids’ camp version of cooking chef challenge show.

It’s also important to remember that these numbers aren’t “real” because much of the money isn’t liquid. We can’t spend those retirement investments without taxes and penalties. We can only access the equity we have in properties if we sell them or open a HELOC. We can do some things to get to this money, but it only makes sense when my wife retires, and we are in a lower tax bracket.

You’d think we’d feel “rich” having “won” the money game. Most of the time, we don’t feel rich at all. Our social circle tends to have generationally rich people. Nearly every of my son’s classmates lives in a $2-3 million house. Dog boarding is looked down upon in the private school society. However, we are “rich” relative to many people’s circumstances. Money is relative. There’s a lot of value to being able to laugh at emergency bills and make reasonable splurges.


(The blue line represents the total adjusted passive income. The Red Line represents the three-month average.)

The three-month average in August 2021 was $8,856.01. In August 2022, it was $8,101.23. Now, in August of 2023, it is $8,628.71.

It doesn’t look like it’s growing too much. In August of 2021, people were getting vaccines and traveling a ton. That led to a lot of dog boarding in those numbers. All of these numbers are very good, especially adjusted to reflect their passive nature.

None of the numbers here include my wife’s bread-winning day job as a pharmacist or the minor freelance work I’ve been doing over the last few years. This income isn’t passive at all. When my wife retires, we can count her vested military pension as more passive income. It might be worth around $85,000/year and includes access to a good health care plan. A pension is a passive income cheat code. They are so rare nowadays. It gives us a lot of flexibility that most people don’t have.

For now, this active income (including the dog boarding) is the fuel that drives the passive income engine – it allows us to live well, get our kids a top education at a private school, pay off our mortgages, and invest. My income doesn’t match my wife’s, but the flexibility allows me to stretch almost every dollar of our spending. It also allows me the flexibility to bring the kids to school and after-school activities.

Net Worth Update

My net worth updates aren’t fascinating. I don’t share the exact numbers. That’s why it’s just a footnote, not its own article.

Net worth is one of the most critical numbers in personal finance, so it is worth sharing in some way. Showing relative growth can be helpful.

This past month, our net worth was up 0.72%. For the year, it’s up 11.97%. The steak of hitting all-time net worth highs has reached five months. That’s great, but most of it is in Zillow’s evaluation of our primary residence. That’s not useful net worth until the mortage is paid off.

Many bloggers show how much they spent and how much they made during the month. I don’t keep track of all those numbers. Some tools can make it relatively easy. However, tracking overall monthly numbers works best for me. I can look at our liquid cash numbers, which gives me similar information. In the last month, we grew our liquid cash by $3,000. For the year, our liquid money has increased by $35,000.

There’s a big wild card in calculating our net worth. Now that my wife’s military pension is vested, it’s reasonable to ask whether we should include it in our net worth. If the U.S. government didn’t back it like treasuries or FDIC, I may feel I should account for some uncertainty. I decided that it makes sense to include it. She could have earned a larger immediate salary if she didn’t work for the government. That would have boosted all the numbers across the board. Calculating pension value is not easy, but here’s the best way to know what a pension is worth.


Let’s end the month with a salute to summer.

It’s important to recognize that everyone is in a different place in their financial journey. I’ve been blogging about personal finance for 17 years. FIRE wasn’t a “thing” back in 2006, but that’s been my goal since the first sentence of this blog.

We naturally are further along in that journey than some younger readers who may be just starting. Many of those readers are saddled with huge student loans we didn’t have to deal with. If you are one of these readers, I hope you won’t be discouraged by some of the numbers above. I didn’t start many of these graphs until year 10 of blogging and early retirement planning. Please try to use it as motivation for what may be possible (depending on your circumstances and market luck) over 15-20 years.

How was your month? Let me know in the comments.

Filed Under: Alternative Income Tagged With: alternative income streams

Summer Vacation 2023: “Rhode” Trip to Pennsylvania

September 7, 2023 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

Warning! This article is a vacation recap. It is purposely light on the financials. I’ve got a monthly review coming up and three or four more articles outlined. It’s also a very long article.

I hope everyone had a great summer. With Labor Day in the rearview mirror, it’s safe to say it’s over. We’re 2/3rd through the year. It’s time to sprint, sprint, sprint for the next three months until we get to the holiday season slowdown.

I’m going to cling to summer a little longer. The weather will be nice for a few more weeks. I also have my August recap coming up in a few days.

Right now, though, I want to take you on a “road trip”, our main vacation of the summer. We just got back Sunday, so we snuck it in late. It’s an excellent time to travel because many summer camps are over, and our kids don’t start school until after Labor Day. We may need to change things up in the future, though, because the school planned many events just before the Labor Day weekend. How rude!

Last year, we took a bucket list Disney Cruise which covered five countries over two weeks. This year, we went on a road trip from Rhode Island to Pennsylvania. That’s what inflation will do to you, right? I’m joking. We didn’t have much time to plan, so we did what was familiar.

Here’s what we did:

New York City (Sunday 8/27)

We got up early and hit the road to our first stop – New York City. An unexpected but pleasant surprise was that no one else was traveling on a Sunday morning. We had almost no traffic.

A couple of years ago, we stayed at the Marriott Marquis. My wife couldn’t get the same fantastic government rate, so we settled for a Marriott Courtyard near Broadway. It was okay because we weren’t planning to spend too much time in the room.


The Marriott Courtyard upgraded us (for free) to a room with a view of the Empire State Building.

As soon as we dropped our stuff off, we went to lunch. We were thinking of grabbing a slice of famously great NY pizza, but we had some extra time, so we decided to try a sit-down Mexican place, Rick Bayless’s Tortazo. I never heard of Rick Bayless, so I looked him up. He’s a celebrity chef who has won all kinds of awards. The food was great and cheap (by NYC standards)!

Next, we were off to the main event, Little Shop of Horrors. My wife loves Broadway shows. Even though this was technically off-Broadway, it starred Jeremy Jordan, who she also loves. The kids have started to like musicals since their summer theater camp is focused on making a musical. I hadn’t seen the movie in a long, long time – if I even saw the whole movie at all. The play was great and had a different and better ending, apparently unsuitable for Hollywood.


American Dream had Dream Riders that you could rent ($1 a minute). It’s a great way for kids to terrorize unsuspecting shoppers. My wife and I went for a spin on them too. They can go pretty fast, so it’s a lot of fun.


We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the performance, so I got one from before it started.

After the play, we went to the Nintendo Store. We hadn’t been in four years, and there were a lot of new Pokemon to collect. Also, the kids have branched out to Kirby and Mario. The kids bought half the store using many months of saved-up allowance. We also went to FAO Schwartz to play on the piano. We popped into Krispy Kreme as one of our kids had never their doughnuts.

We ate some dinner at a small place, Emily’s. It was acceptable, but the most noteworthy thing was that they had almost no staff, so everything took forever. I had tried to plan a better dinner, but a lot of places in NYC close early on Sunday evenings due to the blue laws.

American Dream (Monday 8/28)

We got up early and picked up some food from a food cart. The poor guy didn’t know what to do with our order of 37 items. I’m sure he’s used to everyone’s Monday morning ritual of a coffee and bagel on the way to work. He charged us exactly $25. He must have estimated the bill, right?

From there, we tried to check out of the Marriott Courtyard to go to our next destination. They had told us that we needed to call for our car an hour in advance because they couldn’t park it on site. After an hour and a half of waiting for our car, we complained. They had thought we had already had our car and left. They gave us free parking. We finally got our car after about two hours.

It was a good thing that our next stop, American Dream, wasn’t too far away. If you have yet to hear of it, it’s a new supermall, like Mall of America, but smaller. They have an indoor amusement park, ski slope, skating rink, water park – you get the picture.


Who said Toys-R-Us went out of business? It’s alive and well at American Dream.

We went straight to our hotel, a Hampton Inn. Our room wasn’t ready (it was only 11 AM), so we checked our bags and took their free shuttle to the mall. The kids and I were interested in the water park. It was Dreamworks-themed, and my kids have recently rediscovered the awesomeness of Shrek. My wife chose to skip it to go shopping instead.

The water park is largely a “whole day” event. I have never seen so many water slides in my life. There must have been more than a dozen. Some of them were crazy insane, and no one in our group was brave enough to try them. Unfortunately, the wave pool was broken. It was just a standard pool. They had mentioned it before buying access. It meant there was no indoor surfing, which would have been fun.


Bringing my phone in the water park was inconvenient, so we’ll have to settle for this picture of the entrance.

Another ride, the Dream Runner, broke while we were there. We waited in line for an hour while they figured out it wasn’t working well. Finally, they told us and shut the ride down. If it worked, it would have been a great ride. It is the “world’s longest hydromagnetic rocket coaster.” It went around the whole water park like a water monorail.

After the water park, we went to have dinner at Mr. Beast Burger. It was the main reason the kids wanted to go American Dream. You can get Mr. Beast Burger food from a virtual kitchen almost anywhere, but this is one of the only real restaurants. My 10-year-old said it was the best burger he’s ever had. My 9-year-old is a vegetarian and gave the grilled cheese a big thumbs up. Then they bought some “merch” to improve their “drip.” (This is how kids talk nowadays.)

After that, we did blacklight mini golf, where I avoided all of the fun gimmicks and got the best score of my life with consistent twos and threes. Just like with investing, boring wins. We also did a hall of mirrors, which was fun. The only disappointing thing is that it lasted only 10 minutes. I was trying to take pictures of the kids in it, and they had already solved it before I could catch up to them and get a picture. Next, we did the TILT Museum. It’s a selfie museum with optical illusions.


My youngest who is ordinary 6 inches shorter than my oldest is a giant in this picture.

The water park, hall of mirrors, mini golf, and museum were in a package that cost $115 per person. Since my wife wanted to check out the shopping more than the water park, she bought a different package that only included the other three. It’s not a frugal day, but we got a lot in. The water park was nearly empty since New Jersey was back in school that Monday – more ride time!

Finally, we finished the evening with dessert at the Oreo Cafe at the top of the IT’SUGAR candy store. My 9-year-old found some Sour Patch Kids flip-flops (one of his favorite candies) in the clearance section (50% off!). He needed new ones because a dog ate his last ones. The Oreo Cafe was good, but it was pretty expensive.

iFly/Hershey Lodge Water Park (Tuesday 8/29)

We started the next day with the Hampton Inn’s complimentary breakfast. I then went to the gym for a bit because I knew I wouldn’t be eating the healthiest food on the trip. After that, we killed a couple of hours by going back to American Dream. We mostly just walked around. If I had to do it again, I might have booked a different hotel that had a pool.

We had to kill the time because we had an early afternoon appointment at iFly – a wind tunnel. Years ago, my oldest mentioned that he wished he could fly, so I showed him the wind tunnel. I explained that this is the best I can do. It was time to make good on that promise. In hindsight, we could have gone hang gliding, but there’s a fear of heights attached with that.

My wife didn’t enjoy the wind tunnel, but the rest of us did. The iFly people pushed an upgrade for more flying time at a discounted rate. I splurged on the extra time for each kid. It was worth it as they could teach the kids more advanced techniques, like turning in the wind tunnel.

We would have bought many more flights if one was local to us in Rhode Island. A different company is supposed to open one about 45 minutes from us, but they’ve been “opening” since 2020, so I don’t know if it will happen. They are doing pre-sales now and seem active on social media, so I have my fingers crossed.

After our flights, we drove to Hershey, Pennsylvania. It’s a few hours away, so I rushed because I wanted to get some of the awesome Hershey Lodge Water Park time in before it closes at 9 PM. It’s a small water park that’s included in the hotel stay. It’s got a couple of 5-story water slides and some other stuff. It also has adult drinks and lifeguards – a big win for parents.

We went four years ago, and it was one of my favorite memories with my kids. For some reason, it didn’t have the same magic this time. I think it may be because we rushed to fit it in. It might have also been that the kids are older, and it’s quite tame compared to the full water park at American Dream.

Shopping and Hershey Chocolate World (Wednesday 8/30)

We started Wednesday with back-to-school shopping. The kids needed some new outfits and baseball gear for the upcoming season. We have limited shopping at home, and Tanger Outlets usually have everything we need. We had a lot of trouble finding the baseball gear, though. None of the athletic stores, such as Nike or Under Armour, carried gloves or cleats. We found a lot of the non-baseball stuff at J. Crew. I even got a pair of socks with cute dogs for under $3.

After that business was done, we were off to Chocolate World. Hershey has a restaurant called the Chocolatier, where most menu items are inspired by chocolate. It’s a great meal. We then went to Chocolate World, a free area outside the main park. At Chocolate World, you can buy all kinds of Hershey’s “merch,” including crazy candy flavors you don’t see every day. They also have a few attractions that you can buy tickets to. They were all sold out of time slots for the day, so we returned to the Hershey Lodge and the water park for the rest of the night.


If the Hershey Lodge is going to give us these pillows, we’re going to have a pillow fight.

Hershey Park (Thursday 8/31 & Friday 9/1)

We woke up Thursday and got the first shuttle to the park. We went straight to Chocolate World to buy tickets for the two things we wanted to do: “Make Your Own Candy Bar” and “Great Candy Expedition.” They are very expensive for what they are, but it’s a good experience. The kids talked about starting their own candy bar company for a couple of days.


Make Your Own Candy Bar is fun. I told the kids that they are going to need to raise capital to buy these machines if they want to do it for real – LOL.

After that, we went to the park and got in early because we stayed at a Hershey property. That extra hour before the general crowd can get in is valuable. It allows you to get to a couple of rides that usually have long waits.

We spent most of the next two days at the park going on everything that wasn’t too scary. Several years ago, the kids weren’t interested in roller coasters, so Hershey was a different experience of strollers and kiddie rides. A couple of years ago, they got more interested in trying them, mostly the small ones. This year, my youngest wanted to go on nearly every roller coaster – even crazy ones that did multiple loops and hung you upside-down forever at 130 mph. I exaggerate slightly. We’ve been to Hershey about four times, and I never noticed they had fifteen roller coasters.

I’ve never been a roller coaster person, but I’ve started to ramp it up since the kids were interested. I find that I can do nearly any coaster as long as I can’t see how crazy it is in advance. If I have to wait in line, I’ll think about the numerous ways that I will die on the coaster and get freaked out. It’s not fun for me. For this reason, the park itself was a mixed bag for me. My older son feels the same way, so we sometimes separated from my wife and youngest.

You can do about 80% of Hershey Park in one day. The second day is good for revisiting some rides, spending extra time at the water park inside Hershey, or going to their zoo. We left the park early on the second day and went to our next destination, the Cartoon Network Hotel in Lancaster, PA.

Cartoon Network Hotel (Friday Night 9/1 – Sunday Morning 9/3)

Two years ago, my kids loved Cartoon Network. Over the last year, they’ve spent a lot more of their time watching YouTube and Marvel movies and shows. The Cartoon Network channel has canceled most of its best shows and has yet to put money into developing new ones. It’s all part of HBO’s plan to make money, I guess.

Nonetheless, the Cartoon Network is still a fun place for a couple of days. We checked in Friday night after the short drive from Hershey. We grabbed some dinner at Arby’s, which may sound strange, but it’s a treat. Our home of Rhode Island is the one state where Arby’s doesn’t have a location. Whenever we’re on a trip, I like to stop by someplace new. The kids didn’t enjoy Arby’s as much as I did but admitted that their fries were excellent.

We were a little late for the nightly event. They set up an outdoor movie screen and show four episodes from different Cartoon Network shows. A couple of years ago, dozens of fireflies joined us. This year, we only saw a few.

On Saturday morning, we went to Waffle House using the same rationale as Arby’s. The kids liked it better than IHOP, but maybe that’s because it was new. On the short drive, we noticed Lancaster has much better shopping than the Tanger Outlets in Hershey. I searched Google Maps for a sporting goods store and found a Rawlings store 0.2 miles away. It was one-stop shopping for all the baseball gear we needed.

After shopping, we went back to the hotel to swim. (BTW, the Cartoon Network “Hotel” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s an old-fashioned motor lodge that’s been updated with a theme.) Unfortunately, they had trouble getting lifeguards and said they were opening the pool at 2 PM. This gave us time to explore Amish country, which my wife loves. She picked up some jars of food like apple butter at a local store. As you can tell, I wasn’t paying attention.

We got back at 1 PM. The pool was open, and everyone had taken all the good chairs. The kids got about 45 minutes of swimming in before they closed the pool. Maybe some kid got sick or something? We moved to the indoor pool and played an hour in there.

Next, we explored some of the fun areas of the hotel. They had a scavenger hunt where you’d spot Cartoon Network characters in the lobby, gift shop, and markets. It’s entertaining for about 45 minutes. We looked through the gift shop and found things were wildly priced. A pack of five pencils was $10 – crazy expensive! A two-foot stuffed Grizz from We Bare Bears was $35 – super cheap! We bought the bear, of course.


The Cartoon Network Hotel had a fun room with a few activities that can keep the kids busy for a couple of hours. Here they are stomping on the squares which review Cartoon Network characters under them.

It was still early, but we decided an early dinner would be fine since Waffle House was more of a brunch. We went to Milers, which offers a buffet in an Amish style. It’s a good fit for the kids because they can try many foods and always find enough things they like. We should have gotten a reservation because even at 5 PM, the wait was over an hour.

After dinner, we returned in time for the outdoor cartoon show and bedtime. The Cartoon Network beds for the kids are especially noteworthy. They are bunk beds, each with its own TV with different channels, allowing you to choose from many Cartoon Network shows. I went to sleep, but I bet the kids stayed up late watching The Amazing World of Gumball. They had seen all the episodes a few times, but they get more of the jokes as they get older.

Sunday morning, we went on a traditional Amish buggy ride. We got lucky because few are running on Sunday since it’s against the religion to work. The company found a guy who was raised Amish but isn’t too strict in following the church. The kids didn’t enjoy the buggy ride, but my wife and I liked learning about the culture.

After the buggy ride, we were off for our six-hour ride home. It would have been nice to have an extra day to stop again in NYC to break up the drive. However, with school in two days, we wanted to have Labor Day as a day to reset and catch up.

Financial Thoughts

I realize that was a lot of detail. Part of the reason why I went into so much detail is to preserve it as a journal entry. However, another big reason is to help give you ideas of things to do on your travel. Many of you probably got a chuckle from going to Arby’s or Waffle House, but why not try new chains when you can?

I would have liked to do a more in-depth financial analysis, but my wife made most bookings using her military discount. We got a lot of mid-week, off-peak rates starting on Sunday. The Cartoon Network Hotel is generally cheap, so the weekend rates didn’t increase much. Since it was a road trip, we brought a lot of snacks and drinks with us, which saved us money.

We used a couple of tanks of gas at a total cost of around $100. That’s much better than flying four people, costing between $1600 to $3000. That savings spread over a week allows us to spend $200-$400 more daily. Some days, like at American Dream, we spent that. A lot of days, we didn’t. Looking back, a lot of the time, we took advantage of the hotel pool. Other times, we were doing back-to-school shopping, money we would have spent anyway.

All-in-all, it was a good mix of price and value. It’s great to reset and get back to the grind with the school season upon us.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

What’s Your Plan B?

August 25, 2023 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

Quick Programming Note: I’m going to be heading on vacation next week, so I may not post again until Labor Day. Things are so busy that I didn’t have time to proofread this article, so please excuse the minor grammar error.

About a month ago, life threw me a big curveball. I have been making some good money dog boarding using Rover. In fact, I had a vision that I might make a million dollars.

However, the local zoning officer came and said that I can’t run a business in a residential area.

The conversation got very nuanced. Is someone allowed to bake cupcakes in their home and have them picked up? What about kids and lemonade stands? It’s hard to know where the line is.

There was a week where I researched everything about town ordinances. I didn’t eat much. I didn’t sleep. It was terrible.

I presented the evidence that I can host a few dogs at the house. He came back with a town ordinance that was intended for dog owners – no more than three licensed dogs at the house. It was no longer about running a business. I let it go, because I can work with that.

However, before we got to that point, I was in panic mode.

If I’m not making money from dog boarding, what’s the back-up plan? It has very much become my identity. Several years ago, I would have said it’s blogging, but many of you readers have moved on. I don’t make too much money from blogging, so it’s hard to consider that my job.

Fortunately, I can still make money from dog boarding. However, it feels like less of a job now that I have to keep the numbers low.

My Plan B

When I thought that dog boarding was done, I went into spreadsheet mode. I started to list new potential sources of incomes.

I had bought another bloggers’ website several months ago. I haven’t set it up though. I figured I could probably make $3,000 a year with advertisements on it. That’s a start.

Then I realized that I still have a strong Rover.com profile. I could switch over to dog walking, which would certainly be legal and not a zoning issue. I figured I could make around $30 a walk and do 300 walks a year for a total of $9,000.

Next up, I could make some money from Kid Wealth. Maybe some people would sign up via Patreon. I estimated that maybe I could find 25 people who would pay $3 a month. That’s $900 a year.

I also do some side work at a friend’s company. I have a little ownership stake in it and get some profit sharing. I thought that maybe I could do some extra stuff and potentially make another $5000 from it.

I thought about setting up a small company that provides email services like Aweber or Constant Contact. I know some bloggers that could use this service and save some money. I don’t know what the demand would be and I wouldn’t want to charge much (or else people would just stick with Aweber and Constant Contact). I figured if I could get 5 customers to pay $5 month that would be $300.

As you can tell by now, I really was starting to stretch. I thought that I could set up local small businesses with websites. I put that down as potentially worth $10,000, but I don’t know what the market for it would be.

Finally, I thought I could write a book about dog boarding and put it on Amazon. Books either seems like a hit or miss. I figured that maybe I’d sell 20 books at around $10. This way if it was a complete flop, I only expected to make $200 out of it anyway.

When I totals up all that money, I’d potentially have another $28,400. It’s not great, but not terrible – especially given my other duties taking care of the kids.

However, I didn’t stop there. In addition to all this real money, I came up with the concept of virtual money. I’d “pay myself” to do items around the house that I had been putting off. For example, I’ve had estate planning on my to do list for a long time and it never gets done. Well, I’d consider it worth $1000 to get it done. So of course, it’s not real money, but it’s not sitting around reading endless articles on politics – or something else that doesn’t improve our lives in some way.

I put together enough of these lingering to do items to add up to around $12,000 to give me over $40,000.

Will I Need My Plan B?

It looks like I won’t fully need to implement Plan B as I can host a few dogs. However, with fewer dogs around, I’ll have some more time. That means that I can certainly look into some of these projects instead of letting them linger on forever.

Filed Under: Introspection Tagged With: backup plan

The Apocalypse is Coming! Buy Gold Coins!

August 15, 2023 by Lazy Man 4 Comments

gold ira scam
gold ira scam

No, no, no!

Don’t.

Stop it!

Al Bundy gives some great advice here:



If you can’t watch the clip, here’s the quote:

All kidding aside, run. Run hard, run now, run silent, run deep, run like Mexican water through a first-time tourist, but the key word here is “run!”

Should I Buy Gold Coins?

In case you missed the answer in the previous section, the answer is NO!

I’ve thought about writing this for some time. However, I figured that none of my readers would be caught by the gold coin or gold IRA trap. Hopefully, none of you have.

The Washington Post has a very good article (alas, paywall) about gold IRAs and the conservative media.

If you don’t have a subscription or just don’t want to read it, here’s my brief synopsis:

If you’ve watched any of the conservative television shows, you’ll see old network hosts make a political argument that the world is ending (or at least the financial world is ending. According to the commercial, gold is the way to protect your money. (We know it is advertising, right?)

When you look under the surface of what the companies are selling, they take a large percentage of the money for themselves. You get a little gold in return. Gold prices are almost at the high that they were in 1981. That’s not a good return on 40+ years of investing. If you managed to buy low, you might make a little profit, but we know that diversified corporate stocks and bonds have historically done much, much better.

The strange thing is that you rarely see these types of ads anywhere else. You won’t see Hulu ad-supported commercials for these gold IRA companies. They aren’t mainstream or liberal cable news networks. They aren’t on ABC, CBS, or NBC. The commercials and companies seem to be designed to take advantage of one audience and their fear, uncertainty, and doubt (often abbreviated FUD).

There are another couple of places where you’ll see these kinds of advertisements. You may see them on my site, as I don’t control the advertising. I saw an ad in Kiplinger Personal Finance magazine this month. They’ve openly stated how difficult print media is when it comes to financial information. Most of the information is months behind schedule due to the lead time they require to print all the magazines. I can imagine that they may have to take subpar advertisers just to deliver the great content that they do.

Finally, some bloggers will take money for sponsored posts like this. In that case, the article was kind of neutral but said that the fees were low, that there are pricing mark-ups, and pricing data is not listed on the website. It also implies Consumer Affairs is a reputable review site, which it is not.

Let me get back to the main point. The Washington Post article found several conservatives who have lost a large chunk of their retirement savings. They trusted the spokespeople.

So stay away. Don’t get scammed by the gold sellers!

Filed Under: scams Tagged With: gold, gold ira

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