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New Year’s Resolutions and Goals 2023

January 17, 2023 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

What’s this? New Year’s Resolutions this late?

Yep. It always takes me some time to figure out what I want to do with 2023. Even now, I feel like I’m putting this together at the last minute. My resolutions may need to morph a little bit as the year goes.

I realize that many of you may not be New Year’s Resolutions or Goals people. That’s fine; I’ve got you covered with some…

Alternatives to New Year’s Resolutions

I get it. To a lot of people, January 1st is just another day. You can choose to start fresh any day. I’m proof, as I’m writing my resolutions in the middle of January. I may not publish them until near the end of the month.

Nonetheless, there’s something magical about New Year’s Resolutions. You have Groupthink in the form of a billion media articles. Everyone expects it and understands why you are making a sudden change in your life. You also have sales on gym memberships.

I need that extra magic. I’m envious of you if you can pull a fresh start off on February 18th.

New Year's ResolutionsIf you aren’t into New Year’s Resolutions, there’s a chance that you haven’t set up your goals very well. You want to set up SMART goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. I cover a lot more in that last link, with an Office Space theme if you are a fan of the movie.

Here are a couple more alternatives to New Year’s Resolutions:

  • Pick a nudge word

    This idea comes from a Washington Post article that I read recently. The idea is to pick a word of the year and stick with it. It could be gratitude, nourish, reconnect, or a pile of other words.

    Last year, the author of the article chose “growth” and used it whenever a situation came up. She asked herself, “Will this help me grow?”

  • Misogi Challenge

    My kids love Japanese culture, so I loved telling them about the Misogi Challenge.

    The Misogi Challenge is about doing something that pushes the limit of what you can do and scares you a bit. If you can accomplish this (or even get reasonably close), then almost all the other challenges you’ll face throughout the year will be minor by comparison. That’s probably an oversimplification, but the previous link will get you started with the idea.

The best part is that there are no rules. You can mix and match any of these ideas.

I’m going to a more traditional set of resolutions. Joe from Retire By 40 turned me onto the idea of using a spreadsheet and updating it every month. I usually do my passive income once a month, so I like to review this about 6-8 times a year. I should get it on a more regular schedule.

Lazy Man’s 2023 Goals and Resolutions

Money

Make $90,000 in Income

I had an income of around $51,000 in 2020, $75,000 in 2021, and $98,000 in 2022. The reason for the increase has been that dog boarding has exploded. I think it will continue to do well, but you never know. I need to close a couple few times this year for goals that you’ll see below. We have some home renovations scheduled, and we can’t board dogs while traveling.

In addition to boarding dogs, I have this blog that makes some money. I also run customer relationship management for a small Silicon Valley tech startup.

It sounds like a lot, but most of the work is flexible and not too challenging.

Wife Retirement Savings – $30,000

My wife is looking to save another $30,000 in her squirreled-away account to reach $100,000 in liquid savings. She could definitely retire now but would like that extra security blanket.

We sold a rental property last year and have this $30,000 in cash. We also have conservatively invested a lot more, and we could use those if necessary. Having the $100,000 feels symbolic to me. She doesn’t follow our money as I do, so I can imagine how it might mean a lot more to her.

Estate Planning

I’ve been trying to create an estate plan for a long time. The big stumbling block is that the lawyers want our money situation in their format (every account, every share, etc.), and putting that on paper is very difficult.

I may just need to throw up my hands and say, “Here’s a spreadsheet of our net worth… I’ll walk you through it.” They don’t need me to write down each individual stock, quantity, and share price. If they do, I can get supply printouts.

Insurance Review

We became very good friends with a great insurance agent about a year and a half ago. We should have done this last year. I’ve been procrastinating because I’m smarter than the average bear when it comes to insurance. I’m not a professional, though. This could be a win-win.

Of course, there’s a reason why I didn’t do it last year. There are a lot of types of insurance, and we effectively have a significant financial “presence” in four states. We’ve tried to consolidate as much insurance under USAA to make life easier, but they don’t do everything in every state.

Since my wife is military, most of the USAA insurance is in her name and doesn’t show up in my accounts. We need to have a call with USAA to figure out how I can get access to all our policies. Alternatively, my wife could print them out if that makes getting started easier.

Business

Kid Wealth (50,000 Page Views, 75 articles)

Last year, I set a goal to hit 50,000 page views, and I’ve only had about 5,000 page views. It’s hard to expect 10x growth, but I hope that something will go slightly viral. That’s all it really takes.

I also want to publish 75 new articles. I published 64 articles last year, but some of them were written for Lazy Man and Money originally. This is an aggressive number. I have some new tools to help me write a little faster, and I may hire a writer.

Content Audit – 15 Articles

A content audit is a review and refresh of older articles on a website. Lazy Man and Money has over 2700 articles over 16 years of publishing. That’s a LOT of outdated articles.

I’ve always been overwhelmed by how much work it is. However, if I can just do my most popular, un-updated 15 articles, it will be a win.

Dog boarding Website

I get most of my dog boarding business through Rover.com. Rover takes a 15% commission, and it’s well-deserved when they bring me business. However, I’ve started getting more business through local connections. I need to have a website to refer people to book outside of the Rover system. That way, I can keep all the money.

Health

Lose Weight (Target: 175lbs 24% body fat

I got close to this last year. I got to around 178 pounds and 23.8% body fat. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep it. Let’s re-roll it again this year.

30 “Health Wins”/Month

I wrote an Extreme Lazy Man’s Diet a couple of years ago. It’s really difficult to keep up with it consistently. However, I think it’s possible to stick to an average of one a day.

Recently, my most common “health win” is to start the day with a salad bowl of raw baby carrots and broccoli. I make it and put it on the counter. Then I pick at it over the next few hours as I’m doing stuff around the house. I usually get up between 5-6 AM, and this helps me fend off breakfast until around 9:30-10 AM.

I’m not always going to be able to make that bowl – especially when we’re traveling. I’ll need to look for other “health wins”. I’m purposely aiming for health wins instead of “diet wins”. This allows me to substitute exercise if there’s not a great diet win opportunity available.

Dentist

I completed this one already this year. I needed to find a new dentist. Sounds easy, but it isn’t.

My insurance, military, isn’t taken by many dentists in our area. My old dentist couldn’t figure out how to bill insurance, and they were overworked with the Great Resignation. They said that they submitted it, but my insurance said they never got it. My dentist and insurance pointed figures at each other for about eight months. My insurance said that I couldn’t submit the claim myself because it violated their agreement with the dentist. They tried to call the dentist (with me on the line), but the dentist could never pick up because they were too busy.

In the meantime, my dentist decided that they would just bill me as if I had no insurance. They wanted their money, which is reasonable.

Finally, my insurance allowed me to submit the claim, and they paid it. Phew! I dodged a bullet, but I couldn’t get any more dental care there.

I called a new dentist and set up an appointment, but they didn’t have an appointment available for seven months. I booked that and said that I’d take any kind of cancellation if they had an opening. After three months, they never called me for a cancellation. I called them up to ask if they still had me on the list. They didn’t have me on the list. They didn’t have my appointment, which was now supposed to be four months away. They were also dropping my insurance in two days.

It’s been a disaster trying to get a dentist, and I felt defeated whenever I tried. Logging into military dental insurance is a challenge. The password requires 15 characters, and it needs to be changed every 90 days – about any time that you’d log into your dental insurance. They then need to verify the phone – the typical code via text. Then there was a step to download a Microsoft verification app to your phone and create an account there.

It… is… a… lot!

However, I finally got a dentist, and they had an appointment the next day. It’s great! I’m going to book them for any and every kind of service they offer. If they want to charge me $100 to meet the Tooth Fairy, I’m on board.

ADHD diagnosis?

I think I have ADHD. There’s a family history, and I feel like I have all the signs.

I tried to get tested two years ago. I explained to my primary care physician that health care has always been a mess for me. The dentist saga above is typical and actually worse in a lot of cases. My physician had a doctor call me to evaluate me for ADHD. I told them my insurance, and they didn’t take it. End of the phone call, end of any attempt to get testing or a diagnosis.

Maybe I can get this done, but I have a couple of other healthcare battles to fight as well.

Hobbies

I need to come up with some hobbies. My hobbies have largely been related to work or parenting. I need to come up with some other stuff.

Read Three “Fun” Books

I have a ton of sports books that I’ve been gifted over the years. I’m not limiting this to only sports books, though.

I can’t remember the last adult book (to differentiate it from kid books that I read for Kid Wealth) that I finished. It might be my possible ADHD that makes it so difficult for me to concentrate on a book.

Drone Flying

I bought myself a drone last Christmas (13 months ago), and I haven’t done anything other than get it to hover in the living room. I want to spend more time learning how to fly, but I also want to do it with my kids. We are also boarding a few dogs at any given time – so it’s hard to just leave them to go fly a drone.

Guitar

I want to

Program in Python

Last year, I had this goal and didn’t make much progress. I want to create a “toy” app. It doesn’t have to be useful, but just something that gets me back to being the software engineer that I used to be.

Family

Clean and Organize House

I feel like most of the house is clean, considering the number of dogs we have here. However, we seem to just acquire more and more stuff. It’s time to reduce and organize.

To start, we’ve hired painters to paint the whole interior of the house – well, almost everything. We’re also replacing the carpets upstairs. When we bought the house they weren’t pet-friendly and the new ones should be much better. They are starting as I publish this.

Travel

We like to travel three or four times a year. We talk about where we want to go, and my wife handles the logistics. I need to be more involved. She just finished planning our trip to southern California in March. We’re going to hit Disneyland, Universal, and visit some friends. Oh, and my wife has a pharmacy convention where she’s being inducted into the Pharmacist Hall of Fame. It’s not literally called that, but that’s what she compared it to. It’s great that they planned the ceremony around our travel and kids’ school vacation. I’m joking, but it just worked out that way.

It’s getting hard to travel because our dog is 14 years old. However, she found an awesome Rover sitter who works at the animal hospital across the street from where we live. She’s young and lives with her mother, so house-sitting for us is a perfect situation for her. It’s perfect for us too because our dog can be comfortable in a place he knows without having to deal with stairs or anything like that.

For our other travel, we’ll likely do our annual staycation to Block Island in the summer. We want to do a European cruise in August. We want to go back to our Aruba timeshare in November/December.

FinCon, the personal finance convention, is in New Orleans in October. I love New Orleans, and I’m happy to pull the kids out of school for a few days to go. There’s a lot of culture there, and it will be a great field trip.

That’s a lot of travel. With all that travel, I may not do as much dog boarding. That impacts the income goal. All this travel also leads to a lot of spending, which impacts the goal of my wife saving for retirement. It’s going to be a balance. What’s the point of money if you can’t enjoy it right?

Kids

Our kids are now 9 and 10. They are able to do more and more all the time. We’ve come a long way since we were wiping their butts.

In no particular order, this is what I have planned for the kids this year. This is in addition to karate, music lessons, Cub Scouts, and other stuff they do. They’re already doing well in ski/snowboarding lessons – we can check off that box.

YouTube Channel (20 videos)

They usually get excited about their channel in December. They throw together a few videos and call it good. This year, my 9-year-old actually put together a script, and they worked on it for a few hours. The odd thing is that my 10-year-old is a theater junkie. Once we get our basement painted, it will be easier to make movies.

The goal isn’t to become YouTube stars. It’s just an extension of drama class. I want the kids to be comfortable in front of a camera, know how to edit videos, and simply be able to present their ideas outside of the written word. If all that fails, they are being creative, which is always a great learning experience. I work with them to figure out how we can make the videos better. It’s fun for me too.

Sports

My 9-year-old enjoys sports, but he loves art and building more. I’ve already applied him to M.I.T.’s architecture school early decision – LOL. It will be easy to get him into sports. He gives 110% effort into everything, and it’s great!

My 10-year-old doesn’t do well with sports. He has fun, but he’s extremely competitive at everything and not athletic (blame my bad genes). It’s not a great combination. I think a little more confidence can make a world of difference.

The goal here is to throw the football around, hit some baseballs, or basically just be a kid. It sounds easy, but we’re booking a lot of camps. The dog boarding means that our yard needs to be cleaned up well before we can play.

Digital Art

My 9-year-old loves art. He’s great at drawing, but he’s not as excited to color it. I spotted a deal on a Samsung Tablet (S7, I think) last year. It came with a great pen. I wanted him to use it more for his art last year, but it didn’t work out. I’ll make it a formal goal this year. It will be easier for him to add color. He’ll be able to print out copies and share them with friends.

I think he’ll still love pen and paper, but I think learning how to use art software is great for him too.

Computer Programming

I don’t know how to move forward with computer programming for my 10-year-old. He dreads going to Lego Robotics but then has so much fun there. I don’t think he’s learning a lot of programming. My only other options are to home-school it, and he’s very busy with other extracurricular activities.

My 9-year-old loves Legos, and his robotics class is going to start in a week.

Specialty Camps

In previous years, we had the kids try all sorts of camps. Some things worked, and some things didn’t. I feel like we’ve honed on what works, so we’ll continue with those. We don’t know about the timing of what’s going to be offered, so we’ll have to see how it works out.

Final Thoughts

Wow, that’s quite the list. I originally thought about shrinking the list from last year, but what’s the fun in that? You can’t accomplish big things without thinking big, right?

When I have a list this big, I know that I’m setting myself up for failure. There’s a certain amount of freedom to that. The pressure is off to get it all done.

That’s the longest article that I’ve written in some time. I should have split it into two articles.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Seven Ways To Save On Insurance In Time For The Holidays

December 14, 2022 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

Today’s article is from Abbie Clark who has been working as a blogger and freelance writer for over three years. As a young wife and new mom, she is passionate about finding creative ways to save money and hopes to help others to do the same! When she isn’t writing, you can find Abbie baking something sweet, watching The Andy Griffith Show with her husband, or telling her 1-year-old not to eat paper. You can find out more about Abbie on her website here.

Every year as the holiday’s inch closer, I have found myself feeling more and more anxious due to just how expensive the season can be. From presents to decorations, and food, there are so many common holiday expenses that add up quickly and can leave you feeling a bit overwhelmed. Luckily, this year I decided to take control of the situation and get creative with my holiday budgeting. More specifically, I wanted to focus on how I could save money on insurance.

Here are 7 ways that I was able to save on insurance this holiday season while still being able to afford the gifts and activities that make this time of the year so special.

1. Reduce coverage on older vehicles

We have two cars that are each over ten years old. I decided that instead of paying for full coverage on these older cars, I would reduce the coverage to just liability insurance. This saved me more than 20% on my car insurance bill, which I was able to put toward other holiday expenses.

2. Shop around for better rates

I did more than I usually do this year when I was shopping around for better rates. I normally just compare car insurance quotes, but I decided to take it a step further and look at different companies and products beyond just auto insurance. I had no idea how much I could save by switching providers for my health and homeowners insurance! I highly recommend that everyone look around for the best rates because great deals can add up in a hurry.

3. Look for discounts

I was surprised to find out that I could be saving money on my insurance premiums without having to make a major switch or shop around. My providers had a variety of discounts I could cash in on, ranging from something as simple as being a homeowner to having good grades. I just had to verify I qualified by presenting some documents and I was immediately able to lower my insurance rate. I found it incredibly easy and would definitely recommend that others look for discounts with their current providers before looking elsewhere.

4. Bundle your policies

I was able to significantly reduce my monthly insurance premiums when I bundled all of my policies with the same provider. I added auto, home, and life insurance policies together to take advantage of their discounted rates. This made it easier for me to compare gift quotes and I am now confident I am receiving the best pricing available in the market today. Bundling policies is a great way to save money while ensuring I have enough coverage in place for my needs.

5. Pay your premiums annually

I always find that paying my insurance premiums annually makes a lot of financial sense. I get to avoid those pesky monthly payments and I usually qualify for a discount if I pay for all of my insurance policies at the same time. This allows me to save my hard-earned money and I also feel much more secure knowing I have an entire year’s worth of coverage and I don’t have to worry about having to make regular payments as I go through the year. It really pays off in the long run!

6. Raise your deductible

I recently decided to raise my deductible from $500 to $1000 as I knew I could comfortably afford a higher amount if I ever needed to make an insurance claim. I was pleasantly surprised that I ended up saving a lot of money on my premiums, making it highly worthwhile. Raising your deductible should not be undertaken lightly however and it is essential to determine whether you can handle the associated risks before making any decisions. This change has proven to be one of the simplest ways I have saved on insurance this year.

7. Monitor your credit score

I made sure that I was monitoring my credit score this holiday season. Many insurance companies use your credit score to determine the rates they offer you, so it is important to keep an eye on it. I was able to make a few minor adjustments to my credit score by paying off debts and disputing errors, which ended up helping me save a bit on my insurance premiums. Monitoring your credit can be an easy way to save money and I would highly recommend it.

In conclusion, there are a number of ways to save money on insurance this holiday season. Shopping around and looking for discounts can be an easy way to start saving while bundling policies and raising deductibles can also be beneficial. Paying your premiums annually and monitoring both your credit score and insurance policy are also great ways to save money and ensure you have the right coverage for your needs. Taking a proactive approach to saving on insurance can pay off in the long run and help you keep more of your hard-earned money in your pocket.

Happy Holidays!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

The Importance of Company Culture

December 8, 2022 by Kosmo 3 Comments

Every company brags about its culture.  But when you pull back the curtain, does it really walk the walk?  Or is it just a smoke screen?

My Old Company

Company culture was the primary reason I changed jobs in January 2021.  My old job had just laid off many friends, and morale was in the toilet.  I sold all my company stock the day after the layoffs were announced.  (Note: my 401K is very diversified, and the company stock wasn’t a huge percentage of the total.)  When I saw the type of employees who were affected, I lost confidence in the company’s direction.  Within a couple of months, I had left.

I made the right decision.  Company morale cratered, and even more, people were affected by layoffs that were announced this past June.  That round of layoffs affected a lot of loyal, “rock star” type of employees.  I was stunned at the caliber of people that were targeted.  The layoffs seemed incredibly short-sighted.  The internal IT department had been reduced to less than a skeleton crew.  The internal staff had been supplemented with contract employees, but they simply don’t have the years of experience that the departing employees had.

Culture At The New Company

At the new company, things are very different.  It’s a privately owned company and not at the whims of the stock market.  If the company has a rough patch, it doesn’t react by laying off employees – it rides out the storm.

The expectation is a forty-hour work week.  If there is a big project, it might be necessary to work a few more hours – but the hours dip back down once the implementation is complete.  Time off is granted pretty liberally – for doctor’s appointments, kids’ sports events, etc.  The organization is much more results-focused, and nobody worries if you only worked 37 hours last week – they know that you’re a productive employee and will still be on track to meet your deadlines.

Procedures are used as general guidelines, with the understanding that there will occasionally be exceptions.  When there is an exception, it is considered and most often approved.

My specific role is quite different at the new company.  I am an IT Business Architect – very similar to what many companies refer to as an IT Business Analyst.  At my previous employers, I had limited exposure to company leadership.  There was always a project sponsor who approved various aspects of projects, but they were rarely very involved with the actual work.  I very rarely met any of them in person.

At the new company, my role is considered to be leadership-adjacent.  I have frequent contact with company executives.  While the projects get staffed with subject matter experts who know the minutiae of the requirements, the executives pay attention to what’s going on and provide direction to ensure that the work aligns with longer-term strategic goals.  At previous companies, it was common for project team members (including me) to have limited insight into the future direction of the company.  This makes it more difficult to “future-proof” a system – to minimize the need to re-architect a solution in the future.

Recruiting

You can probably tell that I’m a big fan of my current employer.  One area where we sometimes struggle is recruiting top-shelf talent.  There are a few reasons for this:

  • The company headquarters is in a small city that has several other large employers.  There’s a lot of competition for limited talent in the local labor pool.
  • The nearest metro areas are 45 miles away in either direction.
  • The bulk of the company’s business is B2B (business to business), so it doesn’t have as much name recognition for similarly sized companies that are more consumer-facing

I’ve been doing everything I can to help the recruiting efforts.  The layoffs at my previous employer affected two former team members.  I made it my goal to get both of them hired by my employer.  This meant that I had to convince my management to hire them, but I also needed to convince them to work for my employer.

Candidate 1

When I learned that candidate 1 was affected by the layoffs, I started keeping an eye open for potential opportunities.  As luck would have it, my department did a strategic restructuring that created a new position that this guy would be great for.  I reached out to him, gave him some background on the company, and got his resume.  The hiring manager was very interested and lined up an interview.  Due to a backlog with HR (we were hiring many people), the interview was scheduled for a couple of weeks in the future.

In the interim, my friend interviewed with another company and got an offer.  He reached out to the hiring manager to see if there was any way to have the interview sooner.  The hiring manager had been so impressed with my friend that he had the interview panel shuffle their schedule and scheduled the interview for the very next day.

He got a job offer and joined us a couple of months ago.  He jumped in feet first and has already been able to fix a couple of long-standing problems.

Candidate 2

I’ve been working on candidate 2 for even longer.  I worked very closely with him at my previous employer, and I knew that he was really getting beaten down by the daily grind.  He was an expert on many technologies (and always willing to learn a new one) and consequently worked a ton of hours to get everything done.  I’d been trying to find a position for him even prior to the recent layoffs that eliminated his job.

It was a shock when the company announced that he was going to be laid off.  As I write this, the company is getting through its first day without him.  I won’t be surprised if there is a major outage this week.

It was harder to place Candidate 2 because there wasn’t an opening that matched his skill set.  But I kept sharing his resume with various managers in the department, confident that there was a spot for him with the company.  I knew that he would make any team stronger.

Finally, a newly-minted manager reached out to me to ask about “this guy you know”.  He was looking to hire someone, and one of the other managers had mentioned my friend.

My friend’s current skill set wasn’t a complete fit for the role the manager was looking to fill.  However, he believed that my friend could quickly work his way into that role.  He had another manager interview, my friend, for a different role, with the idea of moving him to a higher role in the near future.  They could see that he was top talent and didn’t want to let him walk out the door simply because he wasn’t a 100% fit right now.  The skills required for the job evolve quickly.  Even if a candidate is perfectly aligned with the current needs, they’d have to learn new skills in the future.  To use a hockey analogy, they knew that my friend had the ability to skate to where the puck was going to be, even if he was currently a step or two behind some other skaters (candidates).

Remote work

My company is reluctantly accepting remote work for some roles.  I work from home 60% of the time, while many other roles are completely in the office.

My friends were both going to push for a lot of work from home.  One of them lives 70 miles from the office, and the other one lives 85 miles away.  Neither of these is an acceptable daily commute, especially for candidates with other options.

Both of the hiring managers made exceptions to allow predominantly work from home for both of the new employees.  While the company prefers to have people in the office, they knew that they were going to lose both of these candidates if they weren’t flexible.

Culture is important

What is the company culture at your workplace?  What do you like or dislike about it?

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Lazy Man 2022 Goals (October Update)

October 17, 2022 by Lazy Man Leave a Comment

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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2022 goals

Passive Income Update: June 2022

July 12, 2022 by Lazy Man 3 Comments

How is July going for everyone? We’ve successfully navigated the first half of 2022. My wife and I just celebrated 15 years of marriage. This is looking like a big month, but first, we need to close out with a look back at June.

June is always notable because the kids get out of school. The kids graduated into third and fourth grade with great report cards even by my tiger-dad standards. That was a month ago, so it already feels like it’s almost back-to-school time.

We started the month on a bit of a sad note. My son’s best friend moved to San Deigo – about as far as you can get from Rhode Island. We went bowling at the military base and had a great time. My son beat me though he had an advantage of guard rails.

We spent most of a week on Block Island as we’ve done for several years in a row now. It’s strange to escape island life for… another island, but we can get there in a couple of hours (one hour is a ferry ride) and it’s so remote that it’s easy to unplug. My last update was from Block Island and I couldn’t upload pictures with the poor internet connection. I found a glass float which is extremely difficult to do. The hunt for glass orbs on Block Island is covered well in this NY Times article.

We got back, had a weekend of a little beach time, and then went to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. My family and my wife’s family used to go as little kids. (We didn’t know each other at the time.) The big draw for me was Jack Johnson’s first tour in five years. Zac Brown came out and did a few cover songs (Tom Petty, Steve Miller Band, etc.) with him. I’m not a Zac Brown person, but it was cool to have the extra star power and familiar songs.

While we were up in New Hampshire, we went to the World’s Largest Arcade. It has all the classic games. I put a quarter in Dr. Mario and a long, long, time later had the top score.


High Score! My wife may be pharmacist, but I’m the best two-dimensional pill dispenser in the family.

We also went to Santa’s Village, which is a small theme park that’s been around since 1953. I’m sure my mother has pictures of me there when I was a kid. There’s something awesome about celebrating Christmas in June.


Kids getting ready to go “You Tubing” at Santa’s Village. LOL!

To top off the month, the Newport Gulls, a famous summer league baseball team, called us up and asked if we get the kids to do a last-minute color guard for the national anthem. They had a cancellation, so we stepped up.


Scouts doing their flag thing for the next baseball stars.

In my spare time, I’m working on Kid Wealth. As part of that, I’m discovering new bloggers. If you love the “Lazy” part of my brand, you might enjoy, Don’t Work Another Day. It feels like that’s what I did through June.

That’s enough of the personal stuff… 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 to it. 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 right now. We still have mortgages to pay off. Instead, I calculate the percentage of equity we have to show where on that journey we are. Each month, you’ll see that the bank owns less and we own more. When we get to owning 100% there will be no mortgages and all that rental income can be used for living expenses. When it comes to 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 do 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. For example, I’m writing this while boarding 2 dogs right now. I leave real estate and investment income as their separate main sources of very passive income. This way if you want to only count those you can do that.

1. Blogging + Dog Sitting Income

June was a great month for blogging and dog sitting. I know that blogging and dog sitting is stretching the idea of passive-ish income, but June makes an argument that it is more passive than you might think. Despite traveling for nearly two weeks and having little internet connection for part of the time, I did okay.


Jake’s back to the beach on Block Island.

My dog sitting income was the third-best of the year. Summer tourism is always big in Newport, RI. So even with the partial month, we did well. Blogging was our second biggest month. I wish I could say it was something actionable, but it seems like that’s how the advertising Gods worked.

In May, “dogs and blogs” combined for a total of $5,079.36. In June, it was:

Total Blogging + Dog Sitting Income: $4,847.86

That’s 95% of the income with only about 66% of the work. I’ll make that trade any day.

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 of catering to the smaller dogs – he just loves them. They are both doing vet camp at the local animal shelter.

Their help means that 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. Learn why you should get started with a kid 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

For the first time in a long time, Zillow didn’t estimate our properties were worth more this month. Real estate prices can’t go up forever, especially with high mortgage rates.

We went from 76.53% to 76.84% ownership of the equity in our properties. That modest gain came from simply paying down mortgages. If we owned the rental properties with no mortgages (100% of the equity), we’d make about $4,000 a month after insurance, property taxes, condo fees, and estimated condo maintenance.


The fabled Block Island Glass Float

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 much, so quickly, there’s a huge gap between what we could reasonably be bringing in and what we are bringing in.

If you multiply our expected net rent of $3,650 by the amount of equity we have, 76.84%, you get $2,805/mo. in estimated passive income. That’s a gain of $12 from last month.

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. So in 5.5 years, we’ve seen that number grow tremendously to $2,803. The forced savings of 15-year mortgages are extremely powerful.

When we get 100% ownership, we should bring in about $45,000 after expenses. Rent is inflation resistant as it’ll rise over time. That means that even though this is $45,000 in today’s dollars, we don’t have to worry about it buying fewer goods and services in the future.

Total Rental Property Income: $2,805

3. Dividend Income

For this section, I assume we will earn a 2.5% dividend yield on our holdings. That could be from a high-dividend ETF. For example, HDV is currently paying about a 3.31% yield, but it has been less in the past.

There’s a chance we could do better than this. There are some income investing ideas here. 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 and in full disclosure, I make a few dollars if you sign up for it.)


I’m always impressed by my 8-year-old’s art. There’s a lot going on here.

Of course, we may not convert everything over to dividend income at all, the 2.5% dividend is a conservative way to think of our investment portfolio. Many experts would suggest using a standard 3.5% or 4% withdrawal rate. The income would be much more if we did that.

The stock market went to hell again. Well, I’ve seen a lot worse. The drop means that this is going to be worse. We’ll continue to buy in at these low prices and when the market recovers we’ll enjoy new portfolio highs. Since all of this money is in our retirement accounts, we’ll be invested for at least another 15 years.

We continue to get a profit-sharing check since I bought (a lot of) a company. 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: $3,406

Last month, it was $3,548. A loss of $140 is a big move for a month. I don’t think we’ll be back up by end of the year, but the market often surprises me. When I started tracking this number in January of 2017 we were at $1,180/mo. It’s been a great last 5.5 years.

Our money has been working hard to multiply over the years. For a while, we stopped adding to our investments. Instead we had been focusing on saving money in cash for my wife to retire. Except that, now my wife got a new job and isn’t looking to retire. That’s a roller coaster of emotions. Some days she wants to retire and other days, it seems like she wants to work for many more years. Whatever she wants to do is fine with me. At least this new job is much better than the last one. She’s had time to bring the kids to school and do some things like that.


Brother sand burying

Getting back to the monthly update, this monthly $3,406 would be over $40,000. As with the rental income number above, we should be able to live on this by itself. However, because most of our investments are in retirement accounts, we can’t use much of this potential income for now. (We can use the profit-sharing check as it goes straight to our checking account.)

For the 20th 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 not making any progress on this.

Very Close to Passive Income

Our “very close to passive income” is a combination of rental property income and dividend income. If we had any royalty income from books, movies, or music, I’d include that as well. 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 at the beginning. That takes some active work to keep up. Rental property requires a little work, but not nearly as much.


I tried to teach the kids how to skip stones after dinner at the military base. It’s a work in progress.

We have a setback this month because of the stock market. It’s too big for real estate to overcome. I love having both rental property and stock market income working together for us. With the stock market dropping recently, our real estate is saving our net worth from dropping further. For much of the last decade, it was the opposite – real estate didn’t do much while stocks quadrupled. I think 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.

Very Close to Passive Income: $6,211

This would be almost $75,000 a year of passive-ish income. We wouldn’t need to touch the investments themselves. We wouldn’t have to sell stocks or have a “withdrawal rate” – just live off dividends. We wouldn’t have to get a reverse mortgage on our home or the 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 choose to draw them down for more fun, charity, or other spending.

This $75,000 passive income was my goal when I started this blog. I figured that would be winning the money game as it would be enough to cover all of our needs and many of our wants.


A local sailing group put on a 3D hologram story about saving the ocean from pollution. It was very, very awesome, even though it was only about 10 minutes long.

This $6,211 of “very close to passive income” has grown from $2,354/mo. in January 2017. So in 5.5 years, we’ve added almost $4,000 in monthly passive income. That’s nearly $50,000 – a lot more than the $34,000 I made as a software engineer out of college in 1998. 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 I did. It’s a crazy system. I’m just doing my best to work within it.

It’s worth noting that, once again, these are fudged numbers that aren’t “real” yet (except for the profit-sharing check), 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 of the word, even though we are relative to many people’s circumstances. We still have some day-to-day struggles with money. These are relatively minor compared to what most people experience I imagine. That’s one reason we are selling a rental property. It will help us feel a little more financial freedom right now. We’ll still have plenty working for the future.

I used to wonder if we can get to $8,000/mo. in passive income by the start of 2025. A year ago, it was a stretch goal… now it feels like we could make it. We’ll have to see where the numbers are when we sell off the rental property.

Final Passive-ish Income

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

Passive-ish Income: $11,058.86

Last month it was $11,420.36. Considering we were on vacation so much and the stock market took a dive, it’s amazing we didn’t take big drops.

That’s over $130k a year. That (hypothetical) annual income for writing on a blog, taking care of dogs, investing, and landlording is very nice. For the year, we’re averaging around $135k from all these – which is more than for our 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 of it.


We went to a church fair that had a petting zoo. We did this one for years before COVID. It’s good to get back.

None of the numbers here include my wife’s bread-winning day job as a pharmacist or the freelance work I’ve been doing over the last few years (which isn’t passive at all). When my wife retires we can count her vested military pension as more truly passive income. For now, those jobs (and the dog boarding) are the fuel that drives the passive income engine – it allows us to live well, pay off our mortgage, 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 gives 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 solid trend of the numbers staying high for several months now. Second, it doesn’t dip down too far. It seems like it should be at least $8,000, maybe $9,000 going forward.

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

Net Worth Update

My net worth updates aren’t very exciting as I don’t share the exact numbers. That’s why it’s just a footnote here.

I truly believe that net worth is one of the most important numbers in personal finance so it is worth sharing in some way. Showing relative growth can be useful.

We saw our net worth lose -2.52% last month. That’s a big hit for one month, but it’s a lot smaller than what I’ve seen from other bloggers. For the year, our net worth is up 1.74%. With bad markets, inflation, and all the big spending we’re doing I can’t complain.

Recently for something new, I decided to share our liquid cash growth (or loss). I’ve been tracking it for some time, but never thought to share it. Many other bloggers break down their income and expenses in great detail. I’m too “Lazy” for all that, even if my credit card reports can do a lot of it. Looking at our liquid cash is a way to roughly gauge the bottom line, income minus expenses.

This month, we lost around lost $900 in liquid cash. That’s not great, but we went on a couple of vacations and ate out a lot. We’ve been spending a lot this summer, but we’re doing a lot of stuff too. We saved a lot in the past (and we’re still saving now), so losing a little liquid cash isn’t too bad.

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. I decided that it does make sense to include it. She could have earned more in 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.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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