Lazy Man and Money

Get Those Bank Interest Rates and Bonuses!

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Bank

I was recently writing on my other site that when I was a kid interest rates were great. When I was eight, a 1-year CD paid around 9-10%. Savings accounts and credit unions were also paying great interest rates. It was easy for me to get excited about compound interest.

Except for The Great Recession, the same CDs have paid less than 2% for the last 20 years. For the last 10-12 years, they’ve been paying around 0.25%. And these are CDs, not savings accounts, that you can access easier. Saving accounts earn less. My local bank, BankNewport, pays 0.05% even after the Fed has raised interest rates a lot this year. At that point, it might as well not pay interest at all. A whole generation hasn’t ever gotten much interest from savings accounts.

I hated it so much that I once wrote Why I Don’t Have an Emergency Fund. I did have an emergency fund, but I used my HELOC at an 8% interest when needed. It wasn’t one of my smartest ideas, but it worked for me. I didn’t need it very often, and when I did, I always cut spending to the bone to get that 8% paid off. I justified it by telling myself that the money I was investing was earning 10%. For the most part, it has done exactly that since 2007.

I continued this for several years. Even in the last several years, I used a HELOC. Rates we low, and I had a locked-in lower rate than usual.

Our lives are changing. My wife is thinking more and more about retirement and activating her military pension. At 46 years old, we’ve had a couple of decades of excellent compound interest. (We hope to have several more left.) We’ve got some income streams, but it’s time to be more conservative. It’s time to value liquidity. It can be cash, I-Bonds, CDs, or T-bills. Anything we can get to relatively quickly and won’t drop is on the table. As a backup, we still have the HELOC and credit cards, so we can float some expenses while cashing out these safe investments if necessary.

With the Federal Reserve Bank raising interest rates, there’s an opportunity to earn interest in savings accounts. It’s not going to be 7-8% like when I was a kid, but it’s more than we’ve seen in twenty years.

This gave me the idea to look and see if our cash savings could be doing more for us. The good news is that cash can finally work for us – and it can work for you too. We’re moving 90% of cash away from BankNewport’s 0.05% interest to Ally Bank. Ally Bank, right now, is offering 2.25% interest. A $50,000 emergency fund can earn $1125 in interest. That’s much better than the $25 we’d earn locally. They are giving us a free $1100. It’s FDIC insured and just as safe.

But wait, it gets better. If you sign up and transfer the money before the end of October, they’ll give you a 1% bonus. Our $50,000 can earn another $500 for a total of $1600. You can use this promo.

This is the part of the article where I mention that I’ll make ZERO money if you do this. Ally Bank doesn’t know that I’m writing this article. They aren’t paying me anything, to mention it. I don’t make money by referring you. I only make money from whatever ads you see on the page. Other banks may pay you more than Ally Bank, but I recognized the brand and saw a deal, so I just jumped in. There’s no need to delay because perfect is the enemy of good.

Lazy Man 2022 Goals (October Update)

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New Year's Resolutions

It’s time for another update on my 2022 New Year’s goals/resolutions. I should have posted an update in September, but we were just returning from a big cruise. Then it was a rush to get the kids ready to start school and for me to get to FinCon.

The beauty of doing an update now is that I have a little time before the holidays to close out the year strong. Also, by this time of the year, I know which goals are completely lost causes and which are going strong.

Setting goals is useless if you don’t review them and check your progress.

So let’s check in on where I am now. As I write this, it is October 16th. About 79% of the year is over. I should be at about 80% of all the goals below.

Here’s my updated spreadsheet:

Goals October 2022
Click for larger image

Money Goals

Make $70K of income

I passed that goal earlier this week, I guess. I didn’t even notice it. The dog boarding business has been much better than I expected. With my other income streams of blogging and a part-time customer service gig, I’ve achieved 101% of my goal. It’s looking like I will end somewhere between $85,000 and $90,000 this year.

Save Money for Wife’s Retirement

We have put saved $13,173.00 this year for my wife’s retirement. Our original goal was to have this in cash, but the interest on I Bonds is so good that we diverted some money there. Because each of us can contribute to I Bonds, I put some in my name, but I didn’t include it here. We also sold a condo that gives a lot more of a cash cushion. Since we don’t need to have $100,000 in cash, we’re investing it. That gives us cash flow which is more important than cash in retirement.

We’ve spent a lot of money this year. We finished a basement and went on a Disney cruise.

I don’t think we’ll make this goal as I initially set it. However, I’d say we surpassed it in the spirit of the goal.

Business Goals

KidWealth.com

I’m at only 7% of my goal to get to 50,000 page views on Kid Wealth. That’s not good enough. It’s hard to predict when something may go viral, which usually brings attention that continues. So far, nothing has gone the slightest bit viral, so it’s slow going.

I sound disappointed there, but I’m encouraged by how the site is growing. At the beginning of the year, I didn’t know what I would do with the site, but I’ve since found a lot of direction. At FinCon, I met more than a dozen people who create personal finance content for kids. It was completely different than my typical Lazy Man and Money audience.

My goal was to have 75 articles published by the end of the year. That’s roughly 1.5 a week. I’ve published 56 articles. That’s 75% of the way to my goal. I’ve got a chance to reach it.

Content Audit/Article Refresh

I’ve made no progress in refreshing articles for Lazy Man and Money. Writing articles for two blogs is a lot of work. I don’t see having the time to go back and rewrite old articles too.

This is one that I’ll mark as a failure, but I’ll probably keep this around for next year. It’s something that I need to do.

Look into Dog Training

Earlier in the year, I looked very briefly into dog training. There are a hodge-podge group of certifications. It’s hard to find out which ones are useful. I could do the very easiest ones to add a little window dressing to my dog boarding profile on Rover. I don’t think it makes sense to offer to train the dogs that I’m boarding.

There’s a dog and cat CPR class online through the Red Cross. That’s low-lying fruit.

I’m not very motivated to add dog training to my profile because I’m already doing more business than I expected.

Personal Goals

Lose Weight

I added eight pounds on the Disney Cruise at the end of August. I’ve burned most of them off, but I’m still about ten pounds off of my goal here.

I lost a lot of my body fat gains. I have to go back to my extreme Lazy Man diet and pick 3 or 4 thing to focus on each week. Usually, that works best for me.

Drink Less

Between the Disney Cruise and summer hot tub season, I’ve been back to having a few regular beers. I’m keeping it mainly limited to Bud Light, which at least has a low alcoholic content.

I know I’m drinking a lot less, but I’m no longer keeping track of what I drink. So I think this is a success, but without quantifying it, it’s hard to say.

Make a Bucket List

I didn’t explicitly work on my bucket list, but when I returned from our five-country European Disney cruise, I created a travel log spreadsheet. I can tie this into a bucket list.

My 8-year-old made a bucket list for the summer at school, and we were able to complete it. It had great things like surfing, a water balloon fight, etc.

Programming with Python

I bought Python Programming for Beginners: A Kid’s Guide to Coding Fundamentals (affiliate link). I haven’t opened it. I purposely bought a book aimed at kids so I could share it with them.

Buying the book is a great step, but it doesn’t help if you don’t read it. It looks fine on our bookshelf for now. We’ll see if I can find the time to open it up and read it.

Family Goals

Get Organized

I’m not making any progress on this. I need to sell some stuff, and I never seem to have the time to do it.

Travel Four Times

In March, we completed our Puerto Rico trip. Everyone in the family loved it, but I thought it was just okay. After we returned, we learned that our kids’ school was switching languages from French to Spanish. It looks like we’ll be going back more often.

In June, we went to Block Island for a few days. Then we spent several days in New Hampshire. I wanted to go to a Jack Johnson concert, and it’s a place we vacation often.

We completed the Disney cruise as our most extensive travel of the year. We were gone for 17 days. I want to go to our Aruba timeshare, but it will not happen this year. We sold the week off and will use the money to pay the maintenance and have a little money left over.

Parenting Goals

The kids are back in school, and we’ll see how they are doing at the parents’/teachers’ conference in November. It’s hard to know how that’s going until then.

YouTube Channel

The kids picked up their phones and recorded three videos. They are ad hoc and silly, but it works. That’s what I was looking to get them to do.

I bought a tripod on Amazon’s second Prime Day. The kids are excited as they can set up an area to talk about Pokemon and Minecraft. We may not get to 20 videos, but this is finally moving in the right direction.

Drone Flying

I brought my DJI Mavic Mini to Block Island but never got it in the air. So far, I’ve only got it to hover in my living room for a few seconds. That took about an hour of learning how to set it up and about regulations and things like that.

I haven’t done anything with it since then. I thought about bringing it to Europe, but I’m glad I didn’t. I wouldn’t have gotten to use it much.

Computer Programming

My recently 10-year-old is in the local Lego robotics group, and it’s going “okay.” That’s the response I usually get. They’ve been giving them non-robotics homework and learning about green energy. Extra homework hasn’t been getting positive reviews. They are using Scratch instead of Python, so that’s not ideal. It’s still real programming, and he enjoys it when he’s doing it, so I’ll take that win.

The 8-year-old loved his week of robotics camp. We signed up for Lego robotics for him too, but his age group isn’t starting until January.

I will count this as both kids having done 20 hours of coding, completing the goal for the year.

Specialty Camps

When I last reported, they were about halfway through the summer camps. The sailing camp at the time didn’t go well with the older kid, but after a few days, he made the most of the two weeks. He was having fun by the end, but I don’t think he wants to do it next year. The fourth grade has a sailing curriculum, so he’s done it with the class, and that’s going better. We’ll see how he feels in March when it is time to sign up. He knows he will do the theater camp as that was his favorite thing ever.

The younger kid loved the sailing camp and wants to do it next summer. It’s great when some things work out.

Final Thoughts

I’m feeling terrific about where I stand on this so far. I need to focus on Kid Wealth, weight loss, selling stuff (organization), and Python.

I won’t focus on trying to make new income streams, travel, or much of the kid stuff.

8 Ways To Fight Inflation On Your Car Costs

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Marketwatch’s marketing team reached out me and asked if they could contribute some car tips for readers. I read Marketwatch almost every day and I bet many of you do too. I asked them to put together an article that should be able to help almost reader. We’re doing step one and just keep driving our 9 and 10 year old cars.

With inflation on the rise, it’s more important than ever to be mindful of your spending. One area where many people tend to overspend is with their cars. Whether it’s paying for gas, car insurance, or routine maintenance, the costs of owning and operating a car can really add up.

I’m a big fan of budgeting so that I can give a place to every one of our hard earned dollars. But after the pandemic, those dollars started disappearing faster than I could track them, and one of the biggest areas that was eating our budget was car expenses.

My husband picked up a part time job to help combat some of the rising costs, and suddenly our gas card payment was 5x its previous balance and showed no signs of slowing down. Thankfully, we’ve worked our budget and found ways to keep fighting inflation on car costs. With a little intention and research, you can do the same!

1. Wait to Buy a New Family Car

In order to fight against inflation and the rising cost of cars, we have decided to wait to purchase a new family car. We currently have two cars, but both are over ten years old.

We had been thinking about upgrading to a newer, bigger model to fit our growing family but with prices continuing to rise, we decided it was best to wait. In the meantime, we are keeping an eye out for good deals on used cars, using a car loan calculator to see how much we should budget for a car payment, and saving up a downpayment for when that perfect car comes up.

2. Choose a Less Popular Car Make and Model

The cost of a car is one of the largest expenses a family will face. With the price of a new car averaging around $30,000, it’s no wonder that many families are looking for ways to save money.

We are choosing to look for less popular car make and model for our family car. That Jeep Grand Cherokee or Ford Bronco look beautiful, but by downsizing to a Jeep Compass or Ford Expedition, we will be able to cut our car payment in half.

While the Compass may not have all the bells and whistles of the Grand Cherokee, it can still provide plenty of features for a fraction of the price. Because of this simple choice, we will be able to save thousands of dollars over the lifetime of our car.

3. Shop Around for New Insurance Premiums

Insurance premiums can be a big expense, so it’s important to shop around and compare rates before renewing your policy. I found out that by switching insurance companies and taking advantage of newcomer discounts, you can save significantly on car insurance rates.

I was recently up for renewal on my car insurance and decided to explore my options. I compared rates from several different companies and ended up switching to Progressive.

I was able to save over 50% on my premium and actually increase my coverage limits! If you’re due for a renewal soon (or even if you’re not), I encourage you to compare rates and see if you can find a better deal.

4. Set Up a Car Savings Fund

After one shocking car repair bill that took up my extra spending money for the month, I decided to start a car sinking fund so that next time, I’m prepared instead of panicked.

A car savings fund can help you cover unexpected expenses, such as a flat tire or an unexpected increase in your insurance premium. It can also help you save up for a new car if your current one becomes too expensive to maintain, or in my case, too small to fit the children.

Setting aside even a small amount of money each month can make a big difference in the long run. I put $50 a month into my car savings fund. While that may not seem like a lot, the average person spends around $1,000 a year in car repair expenses, so I figure having $600 in savings will be a great start toward that.

5. Get a Gas Card or Rewards Programs

Gas prices these days are more fickle than my mood in a house full of toddlers. My husband has used a gas credit card since I’ve known him and has saved 5 cents a gallon every time he fills up. I always thought all credit cards were bad, so I avoided them. However, after seeing how much less he was spending on gas, I decided to become an authorized user.

Gas credit cards typically offer discounts on gas purchases, making them a great way to save money at the pump. And another option is to get a club membership to somewhere like Costco or Sam’s Club to use their gas rewards programs. By signing up for a gas rewards program, you can earn points towards free gas or discounts on gas purchases.

6. Get Your Car Regularly Checked and Tuned-up

This one is hard for me, because I like to pinch pennies and cross my fingers that nothing will go wrong. But, repairs are inevitable with cars, especially when you ignore check engine lights and put off oil changes and tire rotations.

Regular tune-ups and oil changes can actually help you to save money in the long run. By keeping your car in good condition, you can avoid expensive repairs down the road.

Additionally, I learned that regular maintenance can help to improve your gas mileage. This means that you’ll save money every time you fill up your tank.

Although car care may require a little bit of up-front investment, it will pay off in the long run. So next time your check engine light comes on, don’t ignore it – take your car to the mechanic for a tune-up.

7. Shop Around for Auto Repairs

I like going to the same repair shop because I know the guys and they know my car. However, I’ve learned that getting comfortable costs. Now, I choose to take my car to multiple repair shops to get the best quote. My husband has also learned to become a DIY car repairman by watching YouTube videos and learning to complete simple car repairs instead of paying someone else.

While the average cost of a basic oil change has remained relatively stable, the cost of more complex repairs has increased significantly. For example, the average cost of a transmission repair has risen from $1,500 in 2013 to $3,000 in 2018. This trend is likely to continue, as the cost of parts and labor continue to increase.

One way to fight against these rising costs is to shop around for the best price. Many independent repair shops offer competitive prices, and some even offer discounts for customers who pay cash.

Another option is to try to repair the car yourself. With a little research, it’s often possible to find a YouTube tutorial that will walk you through the process step-by-step. While this option may not be suitable for everyone, it can be a great way to save money on auto repairs.

8. Consider Alternative Transportation and Take a Walk

With 2 little boys, we go to the park a lot. In fact, probably the main use of my car is taxiing us to and from the local park. Lately, we have chosen to walk to the park, and the boys actually enjoy it a lot more than loading up into car seats. And in turn, we save on gas money and get in a couple hundred more steps for the day.

If you live close to your work or school, try walking or riding your bike instead of driving. You may be surprised at how much money you can save by leaving your car at home. In addition, walking or biking is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint and help the environment.

By following these simple tips, you can save a lot of money on your car costs.Gas prices, auto repairs, and maintenance can all be expensive, but there are ways to fight inflation and save money on all of these things. All it takes is a little creativity, hard work and research.

Ask the Readers: Retirement Fund Or College Fund?

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free collegeToday I’m looking for your opinions on one question. Please leave a comment with your thoughts.

David Spigarelli, The 529 Guy sent me a copy of his book: The 529 Handbook (affiliate link). Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy that I’m just a few pages in. I’m not new to 529 Plans having written choosing a 529 plan and 29 thoughts on 529 plans. I didn’t expect to learn too much, but I was wrong. I forgot that books often give you a deep analysis.

When looking at planning to pay for college, I concluded, college planning is impossible, but suggested that you do it anyway. You’ll never know what the costs are going to be. My 8-year-old is tracking to be an architect someday, and Rhode Island School of Design’s official estimated cost per year is $78,941. People rarely pay the sticker price, but it would be $320,000 for four years. Maybe he gets a free scholarship. Perhaps he goes somewhere else and gets a partial scholarship. There are endless options that make the cost appear somewhere between $0 and $320,000 a year.

Spigarelli’s book has some great advice on tackling this seemingly impossible puzzle. The idea is to break it down into pieces. So at 8-year-old, we’ve got about ten years to save. I will assume that our invested money grows 3% more than inflation. It may not seem like a great assumption with inflation right now, but we can’t use 2022’s 8% inflation and 25% drop in the market as the norm for every year. Instead, we’ll go with investments growing by 6% and inflation at 3%.

With that 3% growth, I can put “1.03 y-to-the-x-power 10” in my calculator. I now know that my money will grow by 34% or about one-third. To pay for $79,000 costs, we’ll need $59,000 invested for each year. That’s $236,000 in total. To come up with a monthly payment, I need to divide that by ten years and then by 12 months. The result is a mortgage-like $2,000/mo. Ouch! Since we have two kids, that’s $4,000/mo.

That exercise was a rough estimate. The money invested at the end of the ten years won’t have time to grow by 34%. We won’t choose to go to RISD if it’s the sticker price. We’ve got a number of other ways to plan our specific case of college expenses which include my wife’s GI bill. We also expect years of private school to give us more scholarship options. The GI bill alone should cut our total college bill in half. (It gets complicated, and it will do less if they both go to private schools, but this is the estimate we’ll go with.)

Let’s assume that we should instead save $2,000/mo. for college expenses. Awesome! We can get started on that, right?

Nope. We’ve got a problem.

Personal finance experts rarely universally agree on anything, but they seem to agree on one thing: You should always fund your retirement before a college fund. The reasoning is simple: You can’t take loans for your retirement. It makes sense, and I can’t disagree with it.

However, with that logic, very few people would ever fund a college fund. Retirement planning is a lot like planning for college costs. You can make some guesses, but life changes a lot. It’s possible to come up with a number and to even be on target with that number, but the percentage of people who do it is likely very low. I would guess it to be under 25%. To complicate matters further, college funds are typically used before retirement funds. I’m 46, and many people I went to high school with have kids in college. I can’t imagine many of them have fully funded their retirements.

Let’s take it even one step further. Those parents had their kids around age 28. (That’s a perfectly reasonable age to have kids, we were later, obviously.) It’s nearly impossible for a 28-year-old to reasonably save for retirement and college.

Finally, my question for the readers is, “If you are supposed to save for your retirement first, how do you ever get to saving for kids’ college?” I’m sure the easy answer is that you have to do both at the same time. However, if that’s the case, how do you divide the money between the two? Do you put 75% in retirement and 25% in college? Do you put 60% in college and 40% in retirement?

Passive Income Update: September 2022

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How was everyone’s September?

Our kids are back in school and we’re starting to get back in the swing of things. It seems like all the kids activities tried to fit a whole year into just one month. We mostly did the bare minimum to get by. It’s better now that we are into October.

Our dog, Jake, is really showing his almost 14 years of age. We thought he might be on his last days a couple of times. We took a trip to an emergency hospital expecting the worst. He’s watched too many Tom Brady games. He keeps on recovering with new energy. (Earlier today, 10/10, we walked a half mile.)

Our oldest turned ten. He still loves Pokemon as much as when he was five. I’ve been telling him for years that when he turns ten he gets his starter Pokemon. Then we send him off to fend for himself just like Ash in the television show. I think he half-believed me for a while. I did surprise him with his favorite starter Pokemon. I hired someone on Upwork to create this artwork and I hung it up while he was asleep at night. He wasn’t nearly as excited as I thought he would be. What do you think?

At his birthday dinner, we came across an antique police car convention. It’s not everyday that you stumble upon a few dozen very old police cars.

One weekend we did a Cub Scout overnighter with that fresh 10-year-older. I’m not the camping type. He’s not the outdoors type either. We had an awesome time! We worked on building fires, first aid, problem solving, fishing… etc. They were paired with older Boy Scouts who mentored them in making dinner and cleaning up. They also helped them work on a song and play.

I’m finding that I’m working almost all the time now. It’s not steady on-the-clock work as you’ll know if you’ve ever read this report. Instead, it’s a constant stream of dog boarding requests and Meet and Greets. I work at my customer service job around that, blogging for a couple of websites, housework, and shuttling kids around. It’s a lot, but at the same time, there are pockets like at 10AM on a Tuesday when I’m able to just do nothing.

Let’s start the Passive Income report. I used to call this the Alternative Income Report because some of this income has an active component. However, that idea isn’t catching on, and 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.

The way I calculate these numbers requires that little explanation – it isn’t intuitive. I do things a little differently to show the journey. For example, we don’t have real 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 on that journey we are. You’ll see that the bank owns less, and we own more each month. There will be no mortgages when we own 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 multiply it by 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 of you splitting the profits at the end 50/50.

Lazy Man’s Passive Income

Passive Income Pyramid
My Passive Income Pyramid

I categorize our passive income into 3 main sources that are largely represented 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 a little passive because I can make money even when I’m not immediately tending to them. I leave real estate and investment income as their separate main sources of very passive income. This way, if you want only to count those, you can do that.

For 2023, I’m only going to count 50% of blogging and dog-sitting income, 80% of real estate, and 100% of dividend income. That’s more realistic of what counts as passive. Until then, I’ll just continue with the way I’ve been doing it.

1. Blogging + Dog Sitting Income

With back-to-school, people travel less so there are fewer dogs to board. However, there’s a last Labor Day weekend that qualifies for Rover holiday rates. Those balance each other out a bit, and we had almost as much income as August. Although, I only boarded dogs for half of August because we were on a Disney cruise. I missed a weekend (and a few other days) to go to the annual financial blogger conference (FinCon). I also missed that weekend for Cub Scouts.


This dog has more Earth stuff to accomplish.

Blogging returned to normal after the August pause when I was away on a cruise. I couldn’t write much or work with advertisers. It was good to see that when I’m around and doing work blogging income should be there.

In August, “dogs and blogs” combined for $5,098.35. In September, it was:

Total Blogging + Dog Sitting Income: $5,506.53

I’m very happy with that September income. This represents more of a typical month – no vacations, limited summer tourist season. It’s almost spot on our yearly average of $5,153.


We go to the best Rhode Island chain restaurant, Greggs, for my 10-year-old’s birthday every year. Our 8-year-old is dangerously good with four colors. Choose to Shine indeed.

My kids help with the dog sitting. My 9-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 8-year-old was a little slower to develop dog skills, but he’s carved out a household niche catering to the smaller dogs – he just loves them. They recently finished up vet summer camp at the local animal shelter.

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. Here’s why kids should start a Roth IRA as soon as possible.

(Note: The blue line is the monthly number. The red line is a 3-month average which helps smooth the curve.)

2. Rental Property Income

We’re fully adjusted to having only two rental properties now. It’s great to move from semi-passive to fully passive income. We’ve got most of the money invested.


I will always share any and all Mr. Men sightings. I have dozens of them and Little Miss as well, but I don’t know Mr. Adventure. We were flying back from our Disney cruise for this one.

Let’s get back to the remaining two rental properties. We have a lot less potential rental income from our properties. However, we also have lower liabilities as we our mortgages.

Zillow decided our remaining properties were worth a tiny bit more. I’m happy they didn’t go down due to the high mortgage rates. Our gains mostly came from retiring another month of our mortgage. We’re building equity every month no matter what Zillow decides. (Zillow isn’t an all powerful being, but it is very accurate for our properties.)

We went from 74.67% to 74.89% ownership of the equity in our properties. It’s really slow and steady at this point. One of the properties is on a fresh 20-year mortgage because we did a 1031 exchange (selling one property and buying another to avoid taxes). I wasn’t a fan of “starting over” with this mortgage as it pays more interest upfront before earning equity, but the 4% interest rate seems very good now.

If we owned both remaining rental properties with no mortgages (100% of the equity), we’d make about $2,200 a month after insurance, property taxes, condo fees, and estimated condo maintenance.

I like to use an “expected rent” as we’re currently trying to catch up from years of very low rents. We liked our tenants, so we’ve kept them at a discount. However, with housing and rents going up so quickly, there’s a massive gap between what we could reasonably be bringing in and what we are bringing in.

If you multiply our expected net rent of $2,200 by the amount of equity we have, 74.89%, you get $1,648/mo. in estimated passive income. When I started tracking this (January 2017), we only owned 36.4% of the properties, and the properties had lower rents. The math worked out to $1,174 back then. In 5.5 years, it grew it a ton, even after cashing out of our biggest rental property.

When we get 100% ownership, it should bring about $25,000 after expenses. Rent is inflation resistant as it’ll rise over time. That means that even though this is $25,000 in today’s dollars, we don’t have to worry about buying fewer goods and services in the future.

Total Rental Property Income: $1,648

3. Dividend Income

For this section, I assume we will earn a 2.5% dividend yield on our equities. That could be from a high-dividend ETF. For example, HDV is currently paying about a 3.69% yield, but it has been less in the past. The 2.5% dividend assumption is a conservative number that helps us think about what kind of cash we can expect.


We always have a few dinners at the Newport Naval Base. I think the kids are trying to skip rocks here. I got more hands-on and they were able to get a couple of skips, but not the four that “dad” can. We’ll get as practice in as we can.

There’s a chance we could do better than this. There are some income investing ideas here. I started implementing our investment plan with the money from the recent sale of the condo. We’re building a runway and third quarter dividends at the end of September were more than $1000. In general, we should average around $500/mo. in dividends.

We can also look at making passive income with Dividend Kings. If we wanted to simply retire on this dividend income, I would get Sure Dividend’s newsletter to try to get a 5% average dividend yield. (That link to the newsletter has a special discount rate; in full disclosure, I make a few dollars if you sign up for it.)


The who Boy Scouts organization forgot to buy/bring bait so no one caught any fish. It was still a ton of fun. When we woke up the next morning and walked by this lake it was a mirror – almost like a Bob Ross painting. Because we live on the ocean, he had never seen still water.

Most bloggers use the actual dividends they earned, but I figure we can always move the money around from growth to dividends. A vast majority of our money is in retirement accounts, so we are more focused on growth for now. In this section, we include the all the taxable and retirement numbers – breaking them down would be too complex.

The stock market dropped a ton in September. We got a little luck with a brief rally while I was getting the numbers on October 5th. This big drop means we had a drop in our expected dividend income.

Aside from our stock market money, we continue to get a profit-sharing check since I bought (a lot of) a company. The company is doing well and sometimes they throw an extra profit-sharing check to me. 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.

Total Dividend-ish Income: $4,218

Last month, it was $4,247. That’s not too bad for a big drop.

When I started tracking this number in January 2017, we were at $1,180/mo. It’s been a tremendous almost 6 years.

For the 25th 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’m still not making any progress on this. For the first time in about 15 months, I got to a point where I thought I might be able to get the paperwork back out.

Very Close to Passive Income

Our “very close to passive income” combines rental property income and dividend income. If we had any royalty income from books, movies, or music, I’d also include that. I’m too tone-deaf to have a rockstar music career, but I may write a book someday. This is important to separate from the dogs and blogs’ income. That takes some active work to keep up. Rental property requires a little work, but not nearly as much.


The scouts needed to get a coffee can out of a big “toxic” circle with only ropes and a bungee ring. They built a thing where they could stretch the ring and “grab” the can. However, stretching the ring to grab the can required a lot of teamwork.

I love having both the rental properties and stock market income working together. With the stock market dropping recently, our real estate has kept our net worth fairly high. We locked in some of those real estate gains by selling and invested in this “cheap” market. It was the opposite for the last decade – real estate didn’t do much while stocks quadrupled. Everyone interested in FIRE should consider having stock market and real estate income streams. The diversification gives me great confidence that we’ll be better prepared than most FIRE folks in the case of an unfortunate economic event. We’ll still likely get rent checks if the stock market crashes. We’ll still get dividend checks if a tenant is late paying for a while. Of course a bad economy may impact both at the same time, but that’s what an emergency fund is for.

With rental income not moving much and dividend income growing significantly with the new money, we’re seeing this passive income grow.

Very Close to Passive Income: $5,866

We lost a tiny bit, but that’s not too bad. This would be over $70,000 a year of passive-ish income. We wouldn’t have to sell stocks or have a “withdrawal rate” – simply live off dividends. We wouldn’t have to get a reverse mortgage on our home or investment properties. Property maintenance and property taxes for rental properties are already factored in. We would still have all the underlying assets (property, stocks, etc.) and be able to pass these on to the kids for them to build on – unless we draw them down for more fun, charity, or other spending.

When I started this blog, I aimed to have around $75,000 in passive income. That was my definition of winning the money game. It would be enough to cover our needs and most of our wants. We’re not quite there, but we are close. If you count us being able to draw down on our accounts a little or get more than a 2.5% dividend return, we’re there.


I’m not a fan of guns, but I guess well-supervised BB guns are okay? I bought him an archery set for his birthday. That’s more style. Before COVID he took lessons and was very good.

This $5,890 of “very close to passive income” has grown from $2,354/month in January 2017. So in less than six years, we’ve more than doubled our passive income (an extra $1,000 from the double). It’s an excellent income for many, even in their top earning years. This is one of the reasons why I went with the “Lazy” name; it shows that investing money can do more “work” (or somehow produce more value) than active working can. It’s a crazy system. I’m just doing my best to work within it.

It’s worth noting that, once again, these numbers are fudged and aren’t “real” (except for the profit-sharing check and the new investment income) because the money isn’t liquid. We can’t spend those retirement investments or the equity we have in properties. We don’t feel “rich” by any stretch – especially because our social circle tends to have people who are generationally rich. However, we are “rich” relative to many people’s circumstances. Sometimes great isn’t enough.

I want to set a goal of getting to $8,000/month in passive income by the end of 2024. However, I know it’s almost all about the markets perform. If the stock market gets to new highs, we should be close. We’ll have to see how it goes as time’s arrow marches forward. It’s looking like the market is going to head south before it goes north.

Final Passive-ish Income

When you add up “dogs and blogs” to the “very close to passive income,” you get:

Passive-ish Income: $11,372.53

Last month it was $10,988.35. That would be over $135k a year. That (hypothetical) annual income for writing on a blog, taking care of dogs, investing, and landlording is very nice. That $135k is much more than for our average necessary expenses for the next 45 years. Of course, those necessary expenses aren’t going to cover all our spending, but they are a large percentage.

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 – neither is passive at all. When my wife retires, we can count her vested military pension as more passive income. Since it is vested, should I count that now?

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

I love two things about the graph below. First, there’s a definite trend of the numbers staying high for several months. Second, it doesn’t dip down too far. We should be able to count on at least $8,000, maybe $9,000 a month. The big bump you see is mostly due to the dog boarding business.

(The blue line is the monthly number. The red line is a 3-month average which helps smooth the curve.)

Adjusted Passive Income

I mentioned above that I shouldn’t count dog boarding and landlording as completely passive income. For 2023, I’m only going to count 50% of blogging and dog-sitting income, 80% of real estate, and 100% of dividend income.

Thanks to the power of spreadsheets, I can bring you these numbers now. This adjusted passive income would be $8,289.67. That’s a hair away from $100,000 a year.

Net Worth Update

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

I truly believe that 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.

In the last report we saw our net worth drop by 3.02%. This month it droped by another 3.01%. Let’s hope this isn’t a trend. For the year, our net worth is down 4.63%. That’s not too bad when the markets are so far off their highs.

It’s important to recognize that everyone is in a different place in their financial journey. I’ve been blogging about personal finance for almost 16 years. FIRE wasn’t a “thing” back in 2006. We naturally are further along in that journey than some younger readers who may be just starting. Some of those readers are saddled with huge student loans that 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.

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 US government didn’t back it like treasuries or FDIC, I may feel I should account for some uncertainty. I decided that it does make 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. However, like most of the money mentioned in this article, this isn’t money we can spend right now.

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