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Hey everyone! I got sick last week, but life is too busy to stay down for long. The tenant at our rental condo chose not to renew the lease and moved out. Now, I’m busy prepping the condo for sale. We owned this condo since 2011. It has been a good rental, but I no longer want to be a landlord. I’d rather invest in real estate crowdfunding with CrowdStreet. It’s way easier than being a hands-on landlord. Also, we plan to move in about 4 years. It’ll be very stressful and I want to minimize potential problems. Getting rid of the rental now will be one less thing to deal with in the future. Alright, let me tell you a bit about the history of this rental condo and all the stuff I’m fixing. Condo history This complex has 3 almost identical towers that were built in 1965. The west tower was the tallest building in Portland for about 4 years. That’s pretty neat. These buildings and the historic Halprin Open Space Sequence were part of Portland’s first urban renewal project. Back then, inner cities fell into decline and residents moved to the new suburbs. This area south of downtown was a Jewish and immigrant neighborhood. It was an easy target. The city condemned 54 blocks for redevelopment and relocated more than 1,500 residents. Here is an aerial picture of what the area looked like in 1935. By 1964, most of the buildings above were razed. This image below is looking north. If you’re familiar with Portland, you can see the old US 99W freeway on the right edge of the picture. Traffic was rerouted to the I-5 across the river in the 70s and the Tom McCall Waterfront Park replaced it. Our buildings went up in 1965. This image is looking west. Our complex (circled) was built as apartments and they stayed that way until the real estate bubble in 2006. A developer purchased the complex and renovated it. Two towers were turned into condos in 2006 and 2007. The last one didn’t finish renovation until 2008, but the real estate bubble had burst by then. The last tower was turned into an apartment complex because nobody was buying in 2008. Many units in the 2 earlier buildings were foreclosed or turned into short sales. Purchased in 2011 We lived in a 2 bedroom condo in the east tower from 2008 to 2019. Portland was great back then. It was safe and I enjoyed living there with my family. We had a great view of Mt. Hood and the river. The parks were safe and you could stroll around at night without worrying. The theater was a block away and PSU is right next door. It was great. In 2011, we purchased a one-bedroom condo in the west tower so my mom could live nearby. However, she didn’t like living alone so she moved in with us. We turned the
The stock market outlook remains in an uptrend this week.
Roughly 11 months ago, someone asked me to share my best tip for success with money. It took me less than a minute to say “automatic transfers”. Honestly, I really think that automating your finances is the cornerstone of mastering your personal finances. Automation is beautiful because it removes the decision from your hands. More importantly, an automatic transfer removes the temptation to spend the money. If you’re paid bi-weekly like I am, you don’t […]
Between the busyness of work, family responsibilities, and managing ADHD, finding the head space to plan for the future can feel like a luxury. Some days, it is hard to think beyond what’s for dinner tonight. However, investing in the future is a critical component of your family’s success. It’s about making small, intentional choices today that create security and opportunities for tomorrow. Whether you are planning for retirement, building an education fund, or saving […]
We rebalance our paper assets regularly — twice a month for investments in our tactical asset allocation bucket, more frequently for a small amount (~5%) that Scott actively trades and less frequently for an equally small amount of individual stocks we hold for the long-term. With real estate, we have so far treated it as a long-term buy-and-hold proposition and really only look at selling on a case-by-case basis for property-specific reasons – e.g., selling […]
December closed out 2024, and we went out with a BANG! December dividend income summaries are always our favorite because of the large mutual fund and ETF distributions. This December, we earned over $8,000 in dividend income! In this article, we will detail our December dividend income in detail. Why I Invest in Dividend Stocks I invest in dividend stocks to grow a my passive income with dividend income. One day, my dividend income will […]
Last Friday night around 9:45 PM ET President Trump launched a new memecoin ($TRUMP) on the Solana blockchain. Initially, many thought it was fake and that his account had been hacked. But, they were wrong. It was legit. You can guess what happened next. Within 4 hours $TRUMP was up 4,000%, reaching $8 a coin before midnight. By the next morning, its price eclipsed $30 a coin and its market cap has surpassed $5 billion. It eventually reached a high of $74 a coin before crashing. As of this morning it’s trading at $38. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about the craziness of crypto, but I haven’t addressed the topic for a long time. I’ve mostly ignored these kinds of events because they happen so frequently. Or at least that’s the way it seems if you’re active on Twitter or social media. Every time someone becomes an overnight millionaire in some random cryptocurrency, we tend to hear about it. This happened with Dogecoin, Fartcoin, and many others over the last few years. $TRUMP is just the latest in a long line of FOMO-inducing cryptocurrencies to do the same. But, these crypto success stories conveniently ignore two things. First, most of the gains accrue to a small number of early traders. One analysis of $TRUMP during its first few hours of trading illustrated that the people who experienced the greatest gains were those who bought within the first two hours. Everyone who bought after hour 2 still experienced a great return, but not necessarily the life-changing (10x+) returns that make the rounds online. Second, these crypto success stories overlook the countless number of people who lost money trading memecoins. It’s survivorship bias of the highest degree. For every $TRUMP coin that did well, I can show you multiple coins that didn’t. For example, here’s the price of the Luigi Mangione ($LUIGI) coin since last December: Trading memecoins doesn’t look so fun now, does it? I know that the people who lose money in crypto are overlooked because I was one of them. In early 2022, I lost 70% of my investment in a handful of lesser known altcoins. While my loss was minimal both in absolute and in percentage terms, others haven’t been so fortunate. Don’t worry, this post isn’t meant to warn you about the risks of investing in cryptocurrency. Everyone knows that they are risky. And, everyone knows that everyone knows that. The players understand the game. They understand that this isn’t a Treasury bill. This isn’t a “prudent” investment. This is a lottery ticket that they are hoping will make them rich. We can sit here and pretend that people don’t know any better, but c’mon. People didn’t know any better about FTX. That was actual fraud. But trying to get rich in altcoins? People have known it was a gamble since 2021. The big difference between today and 2021 is that in 2021 the Establishment wanted nothing to do with crypto. But that’s changed. Today
WiseStacker Selling My Sixt Stocks After An Awful Experience Selling My Sixt Stocks After An Awful Experience Today I’d like to share a personal tale that intertwines my investment strategy with a not-so-pleasant customer experience. Back in 2020, when I started my journey into dividend investing, I was all about finding those ‘buy-and-hold-forever’ stocks. Sixt, Europe’s largest car rental company, was one of them. I’d rented from them for years and thought they were […]
This week I encountered a new paper that discusses the risk of getting dementia after age 55. The figures are alarming, especially given that, in addition to however many people will get dementia, another significant portion of people will experience cognitive decline that is not diagnosable as dementia but which will still be problematic in various ways. Below are a few quotes from the paper: “In the present study, our primary objective was to generate […]
Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a fantastic 2024 and enjoyed the holidays. I sure did. The market was on fire in 2024 and we’ll have to wait and see whether we will … Read more
2024 was a great year for investors. The S&P 500 went up more than 23%! I didn’t think 2024 could top 2023, but I was completely wrong. This is why you need to keep investing. Anyway, our passive income also performed pretty well. After all was said and done, we spent less than our annual passive income. That was great. However, we have some changes coming in 2025. See the details below. Passive Income is The Key Passive income is the key to a successful early retirement. Once your passive income surpasses your cost of living, you’ve achieved financial independence. Money won’t be an issue anymore and you can do whatever you want. I retired before our passive income got there, but I had an alternate source of income – blogging. Luckily, early retirement worked out very well for me over the last 12 years. Our household income was good so we kept investing. That enabled our net worth to triple over this period and now we are quite comfortable financially. However, we have some big expenses coming up. Our son will graduate high school and goes to college in 4 years. That will be expensive, but we’re saving for it. Hopefully, we’ll have enough by then. Currently, we support our modest lifestyle with a combination of these income streams: Mrs. RB40 works full-time. She took a sabbatical in 2022, but she isn’t ready to retire yet. She’ll probably retire when our son graduates from high school. I work on my blog for a few hours per week and generate a little online income. I also have a few other small side hustles. Passive income from our investments – real estate crowdfunding, dividend stocks, and rental properties. *FI ratio = passive income / expense FI Ratio The FI ratio is a simple measure of progress toward total financial independence. Once we reach 100%, then it may give Mrs. RB40 enough confidence to stop working full-time. She still doesn’t believe me when I tell her she can retire today. Personally, I think 100% FI ratio is overkill, but it’s better to err on the side of caution. Normally, financial independence means accumulating about 25-30x your annual expenses, which we achieved in 2012. 2024 Passive Income = $76,523 Spending = $63,086 FI ratio = 121% Our FI ratio worked out well in 2024. All of our passive income streams were solid. Our spending was also lower than I thought. It all came together. I don’t think 2025 will work out as well. *Sign up for a free account at Empower (used to be Personal Capital) to help manage your net worth and investment accounts. I log in almost every day to check our net worth and cash flow. It’s a great site for DIY investors. 2024 Passive Income My passive income spreadsheet. How We Generate Passive Income Alright, here is the good stuff. I’ll summarize each passive income stream and keep a separate page for the details. These
The stock market outlook shifts back to an uptrend, after bouncing from oversold levels into a long weekend.
Send us a text Join us on Average Joe Finances as our guest Krista Reuther, the Senior Education Content Manager at TurboTenant, shares her journey into the industry starting as a freelance writer and editor in college, her growth into real estate content creation, and how she assists landlords and renters in saving money through […] The post Podcast 285. Mastering Landlord Strategies and Market Insights with Krista Reuther appeared first on Average Joe Finances.