It feels like I can’t get these reports out on time. I suppose that’s just as well since everyone is focused on the holidays, right? The good news is that the next one will start off the new year.
Personal Update
November was a busy month. My wife needed to earn some continuing education credits for her pharmacist license and decided to do them in Puerto Rico. The kids and I tagged along, and we had five days in perfect weather. It made me seriously consider moving to someplace like Florida.
At the end of the month, we had a great family Thanksgiving. In the morning, I did a five-mile turkey trot run, which is my personal longest. My time of 1:10 wasn’t anything to write home about, but I finished. After Thanksgiving, we took off to the Von Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont, for my wife’s birthday. I went skiing for the third time in my life (second in 20 years) and improved a good amount with a lesson. The rest of my family are intermediate level and go several times a year.
So in one month, our travel took us from swimming in 90-degree heat to skiing in 18-degree snow. It’s quite a change from our average temperature of around 42 degrees in Rhode Island.
Let’s get onto the goals and financials:
My Goals for 2025
I put all my goals in a spreadsheet. Here’s what it looks like for this year. I’ll explain what each one is in this article and give the results so far.
(Click it, and a bigger version will open in a new tab.)
Steal this idea and make it yours. I make an absurd number of goals I know I’ll never complete. It gives me the flexibility to fail on some things as long as I’m making progress on others. Most people would do the opposite, focus on fewer goals, and aim to get them all done. It’s much less overwhelming. As always, I’m pretty crazy, so do what works for you.
Passive Income
I have three side hustles with a passive component: a dog-sitting business, this blog, and a website I manage for a non-profit. They all require some active work. However, I can get paid by all three even while working a full-time job. I make a very little bit of money in my sleep from blogging and simply being available to do the website work. The same is true for dog boarding. I have to feed the dogs, but it’s a lot different than getting an hour wage. I consider income from these areas as half passive income.
(I do some other hourly work that isn’t passive income. That isn’t included here as there is no passive component to it.)
In the past, I’ve written a whole monthly article on this passive income. I’ve cut out the fluff to give you the numbers with minimal explanation. If this area seems off or confusing, reading the last full article will help it make more sense.
Dog, Blog, and Web Income
With the travel this month, we couldn’t book too many dogs. I closed for nearly a full week while in Puerto Rico. I had to turn away a lot of business the week of Thanksgiving because we were traveling. Many people were looking to book for the whole week.
[One day I had it in my head that our dog needed a walk to a new place. Usually, she just plays with the other dogs we are boarding. My wife came up with the idea of bringing her to the famous Newport RI, Cliff Walk]
Blogging income reached an all-time low. I’ll either have to come up with a plan for next year or just embrace that it’s going to be a hobby. I am enjoying many hobbies nowadays (more on that below), so there might be fewer updates if that happens.
Finally, I make some money by running a website for a non-profit I’m part of. I get a set amount every month, and most months, I don’t have to do too much.
In November, I made $1,956.19 in income from these sources. That was less than the $5,653.90 I made in October.
Rental Property Income
We have two rental properties. Perhaps we should only have one? We still have mortgages on them, so when they are fully rented, we make around $700/mo. We will pay off one mortgage in 2027. The other one is a small loan, but it has another 15 years on it. If they were both mortgage-free, we’d make around $30,000 a year after all expected expenses, including maintenance.
[Getting ready at the starting line of the turkey trot on Thanksgiving.]
Way back in March, one of our tenants broke the lease and moved out suddenly. We renovated the property, which took three months longer than it should have, and then put it on the market for rent. It has sat unrented for many months now. We lowered the price by 20% and that didn’t help. We thought it would lease in December, but they needed three parking spots, and the condo association couldn’t help make it work. They backed out at the signing, and we are back to square one.
For the purpose of this report, I calculate the rental property income using the following formula:
(Rents After Estimated Expenses) * (Equity Percentage Owned) = Income)
Estimated expenses are insurance, property taxes, condo fees, and condo maintenance. Equity Percentage Owned (EPO) is our total equity divided by the property value on Zillow. (Zillow is very accurate for our condos.)
In November, Zillow estimated our properties were worth about $4,000 more than the month before. As usual, we paid off about one thousand dollars in mortgage principal, leading to a growth of $5,000 in equity. That meant that our EPO went from owning 83.72% of our properties to 83.97% of them.
A few months ago, I decided to make the terrible assumption that we’re going to get close to the price we’re asking for rent. I had to adjust that as we have lowered the asking price. The rents (with that assumption) after expenses are $2,823/month. Using the equation above, our income from this area would be $2,370. That’s $21 more than last month, which is a nice gain for a single month.
Managing rental properties requires some work. With the recent renovation, we’re doing more than we have in a few years. For this reason, I only count 80% of this as passive income.
Dividend Income
My wife has been maxing out her retirement accounts for a couple of decades. I haven’t done quite as well, but I still have over 30 years of Roth IRAs and a lot of years of 401(k) investments. The markets have done very well over that time. That leads to a sizeable nest egg.
I don’t track exact dividends from all the accounts. (It’s a win if I can get my wife to log into her TSP account and give me the totals.) Instead, I assume we could easily invest the money in the accounts into an ETF that pays a 2.5% dividend. For example, HDV currently yields 3.41%. I DO track dividends in our main brokerage account that isn’t a retirement account. We average about 2.6% dividend there.
I also have profit-sharing income with a private company in which I own a small stake. I get a check each month that behaves like a dividend – it’s just taxed a little differently.
The stock market gained a bit in November. The stock market value is very high now, so I am surprised by any gain. Last month, the dividend income number was $5,726. This month it is $5,803. That’s a very solid gain for a single month. At the beginning of the year, this was $5,045, so it’s about a gain $750 for the year. That’s a good year. Overall, we’re making almost $10,000 more this year in dividends than last year.
Unlike the previous two sections, this income is 100% passive. For this reason, I don’t have to adjust the numbers.
Total Passive Income
Dog/Blogs: $1,956.19 – Adjusted by 50% to $978.10
Rentals: $2,370 – Adjusted by 20% to $1,896
Dividends: $5,803 – Remains at $5,803
Dogs/Blogs Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line
Total Adjusted Passive Income: $8,677
Last month it was $10,432. That’s a sizeable drop, and it’s related to the lack of dog boarding. The good news is that the stock and rental property income is $7700/mo, so we don’t need the dog boarding too much.
Here’s a graph of the adjusted passive income since 2017, when I started keeping track of it:
The blue line represents the monthly total adjusted passive income. The Red Line represents the 12-month average. The point of doing the 12-month average is that dog boarding has some seasonality, and some months are always busier than others.
My goal for this passive-ish income is to reach $109,000 for the year. It’s up to $104,195 and on pace for $113,667. When I was setting the goal, I didn’t expect the market to do as well as it has.
My wife continues to work as well. However, as a pharmacist working with public health, she has problems supporting RFK Jr.’s disinformation campaign. She’s set a retirement date, but it’s more than a year away. She has 26 years in the military and will be getting a pension that would double all this passive income. That pension grows a little each month, and now we’re keeping track of it precisely.
I can’t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth went up 0.57% last month. For the year, it is up 11.25%. Our liquid cash went down around $8,000 and is down $12,000 for the year. We would be doing a lot better if the condo were rented.
Business and Other Money Goals
Personal Income ($75,000)
Three years ago, I made over $98,000 in side hustles. Two years ago, I made $88,000. Last year, I made a little more than $81,000. I see a trend, and it is not great. That’s okay; overall, our passive income is going up, so everything is going as planned.
This year, I’m aiming to make $75,000.
Through November, I made $74,621. That’s a pace of $81,404. I think I’ll finish around $80,000.
Complete Estate Planning
I got the estate planning documents from the lawyer back near the start of the year. This is done. Yay!
Kid Wealth (Goal: 50,000 Page Views)
For the fourth year, I hope to get to 50,000 page views on Kid Wealth. I thought something would go viral in the first year, and I’d get most of them in one day. That hasn’t happened.
In 2022, I launched Kid Wealth and wrote a lot of articles. It had 4,200 page views that year. In 2023, I got involved in other projects, but I tripled traffic to 13,708. Last year, traffic continued to grow to 16,352, even though I only wrote a couple of articles.
At the end of November, Kid Wealth had 50,047 lifetime views. It’s a very anti-climactic goal to complete. It’s like crossing the finish line when the crowd has already gone home.
I’m still looking for a partner or some motivation to make it into a business. Any readers interested? I simply don’t believe the money is in blogging anymore. I still believe in the value of the written word, but I think the brand needs to be something else. My interest has moved on to other projects for now.
Maybe it could be a non-profit and receive some kind of grant money? It’s a good brand and cause, and I’m sure it can be valuable with time to move it in the right direction. I’ve invested enough money and set up a good foundation, but it probably wouldn’t sell for anything much. It was never about making money, so selling it at a loss isn’t worth it to me.
Professional Improvements
A few months ago, I got really excited to create a new application. I did a solid amount with AI for a few weeks and then got distracted.
Health
I’m putting a large emphasis on health these days. It’s so big that I wrote a separate article about it. My health goals for 2025 are here.
Weight and Body Fat (Goal: 164lbs / 19% BF)
My average weight in November was 171 pounds – a pound and a half more than last month. My body fat was 22.9% which is a half percent more than I have been most of the year. The travel to Puerto Rico, Thanksgiving, and the Vermont trip caused everything to go in the wrong direction. It’s not too bad, though. These are averages over a whole month using my Fitbit Aria scale.
I’ve only lost about 2 pounds all year now, but I’m still in a pretty good place.
Body and Brain Points (300 and 200 respectively)
I score myself from 1 (poor) to 5 (great) each week for diet and exercise. Then, I add them up for the month. I did a 5-mile turkey trot race with my wife, so I gave myself an extra health point for that. I lost a couple of points for poor eating on vacation. Other than that, it was a very average month.
At the end of November, I had 275 body points. It’s a pace of… EXACTLY 300 for the year! Let’s go!
I measure brain points on the same scale. They are based on doing things like the daily Wordle and New York Times Connections. I also do Duolingo. Usually, I study Japanese, but I’ve been hooked on playing Oscar in chess. In about 30 matches so far, he beat me once, and I got stuck in 4-5 stupid stalemates. Whoever wrote the stalemate rule in chess should be ashamed of themselves.
At the end of November, I have 175 brain points. That’s a pace for around 196 points for the year. I’ve been making up a lot of ground, so I might be able to get this done, too.
Blood Pressure (Goal: 115/75)
I have a family history of high blood pressure. I had a little medical scare in the first couple of days of the year. Now I think it is orthostatic hypotension, but I didn’t know that at the start of the year. It seems pointless to try to be healthy in a bunch of other ways and let high blood pressure create all kinds of problems under the surface.
My blood pressure in January averaged 138/92, which is high. My doctor put me on lisinopril 10mg and then upped it to 15mg a few months ago. It’s amazing how cheap this generic medication is – less than $10 for a 90-day supply.
Several months ago, I bought this Omron Blood Pressure Monitor on Amazon on a Prime Day deal. That’s an affiliate link, so I might make a couple of extra dollars if you click on it and buy it. It’s a game-changer by creating averages and graphs. It even creates a report that I can give to my doctor.
In November, my blood pressure averaged 127/79. That’s barely changed from the month before and is still a tad high.