Welcome to another monthly review of Lazy Man and Money. We’re a third of the way through the year. These multiples of 12 make it easy to estimate your progress. The next major one is July 4th, which is about half-way through the year. It’ll be here before you can blink, right?
Personal Update
April was a weird month in that nothing seemed to stand out. We did do some interesting things, though:
- My wife and I went to an Adam Conover comedy show. He’s best known for his Adam Ruins which was one of my favorite shows. It’s similar to John Oliver’s tackling of one topic in depth. I covered how he explains that taxes could be done in five minutes here, but the tax software lobby pays the politicians to continue to make it difficult for us to do taxes. Side thought: Remember when Trump promised we’d pay taxes with a single postcard. That would have been a good place for DOGE to focus on.
Anyway, Conover was doing a pivot from his usual stuff, so I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
- We also went to see Colin Jost, who was doing a comedy routine with some other SNL cast members on a night off (they had a re-run). It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Rumor has it that I was only there in hopes he brought his wife. He only referenced her a couple of times – once to refer to her as a plumber. Another time, he mentioned that he couldn’t use any material from their life because every man in the audience would groan.
I actually liked the opening comic more. She was just a writer for SNL. I didn’t catch her name.
- We continued to renovate the condo rental property. We are outsourcing most of it but doing a little ourselves.
- I continued volunteer work for the local community commerce group I’m vice president of and for the parent’s association that I’m the treasurer of. They were both much, much busier than usual.
- My wife went on work travel at the end of the month, so I’ve been on single-dad duty for ten days.
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 through April.
(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 I manage a website 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. 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, perhaps the last full article will make more sense.
Dog, Blog, and Web Income
Dog boarding income in April was hopping like the Easter bunny. Public schools have a vacation and when people travel, I make more money boarding their dog.
Blog income continued to be terrible. At this point, I might make more working at McDonalds than typing up this report. Fortunately, I don’t really need the money from blogging nowadays. I’d remove the ads, but I want to keep the grandfathered partnership that I have with the advertising company I work with. In another era, they’d probably just cancel our agreement, but blogging has been dying in general.
Finally, I make a very little bit of money by running a website for a non-profit. I get a set amount every month, and most months, I don’t have to do too much.
Last month (when I was on vacation), I made $2,341.90 in income from these sources. This month, the total dog/blog/web income was $5,311.79. Go dogs!
With my wife out of town, another b!@#h has taken her place in our bed.
Rental Property Income
We have two rental properties. We still have mortgages on them, so the rental income is 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 $25,000 a year after all expected expenses including maintenance.
Two months ago one our of tenants broke the lease and moved out suddenly. We’re renovating the property and it’s almost done. We should be able to make around $800/mo. more than what we were getting before. That will create a big (positive) change in this section.
Sometimes you have to put the kid to work. Hey, if he’s going to be an actor, he’s going to have to learn a skill that can pay the bills, right?
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 in Zillow. (Zillow is very accurate for our condos.)
In April, Zillow estimated our properties were worth about $7000 more than last month. As usual, we paid off about one thousand in mortgage principal. That meant that our EPO went from owning 82.65% of our properties to 83.02% of the properties. The rents (when they were both occupied) after expenses are $2,218/month. Using the equation above, our income from this area would be $2,206. That’s up $10 from last month. This number moves slow and steady, but you can start to see where the $25,000 estimated income comes from ($2,206 * 12 months).
I’m going to ignore the reality that we aren’t getting any money while we are renovating it. This is why I adjust the rents downward to include expenses.
Managing rental properties requires some work. We’re doing some of that now for the first time in a couple of years. For this reason, I only count 80% of this number as passive income.
Dividend Income
My wife and I have been nearly maxing out our retirement accounts for a couple of decades. The markets have done very well over that time. Overall, we have a nice retirement nest egg.
I don’t track dividends from all the accounts. It’s a win if I can get my wife to log into her TSP (government’s version of a 401k) account and give me the totals. Instead of tracking dividends, I assume we could invest the money into an ETF that pays a 2.5% dividend. For example, HDV currently yields 3.3%.
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.
I take all the numbers in this report on the 5th of the month, so that rent checks have cleared and mortgages have been paid. In March, we could have made $4,586 in dividends. Since we take the numbers for March in early April, we saw a huge dip as the market had just been shocked by tariff announcement .
In April, that rebounded to $4,982. We’re still a little off our all-time highs, but it’s not too bad. I am still using my tariff playbook to be defensive when the tariffs come into full effect.
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: $5,312 – Adjusted by 50% to $2,656
Rentals: $2,206 – Adjusted by 20% to $1,765
Dividends: $4,982 – Remains at $4,982
Dogs/Blogs Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line
Total Adjusted Passive Income: $9,402.70
This number has been close to the norm for the last year. We have some dips, but it’s not too much.
Here’s a graph of the adjusted passive income since 2017, when I started keeping track:
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. April was a new all-time for the 12-month, with an average of $8,871.22 over the last 12 months. Less and less of this income is dependent on my quasi-passive income, like dogs/blogs. That’s important because this income will trend down as I get older.
My goal for this passive-ish income is to reach $109,000 for the year. It’s up to $34,557 and on pace for $103,672. With the busy dog boarding of the summer months, I might be close. If tariffs rock the market, I’ll surely fall off.
My wife continues to work as well. For how long, it is unclear. 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 we’re keeping track of it precisely due to the unprecedented (in her career) caustic work environment in the government/military.
I can’t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth rebounded with the markets. It was up 6.61% last month. For the year, it is down only -0.11%. So for all the back and forth with tariffs, we are still doing well enough.
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 April, I made around $24,591. That’s 1/3 of the year, so I am a little below my target of $25,000. This one might be close, but I’m optimistic.
Complete Estate Planning
I got the estate planning documents from the lawyer back recently. Looks like everything is completely done. I’m checking this one as complete. On one hand, we finished that off early this year. On the other hand, it’s been on my to-do list for years.
Kid Wealth (Goal: 50,000 Page Views)
For the fourth year, I hope to get to 50,000 page views on Kid Wealth.
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.
These are the seats you get when you buy tickets at the last minute. Oh well, at least we were there.
At the end of April, Kid Wealth had 41,884 lifetime views. It’s getting around 1,500 views a month and on target to get to 50,000 page views towards the end of the year.
I haven’t written any articles for it this year. Since Lazy Man and Money has changed from a business into a hobby, it’s hard to justify spending a lot of time on two hobbies about money. With that said, a parent at my kids’ school saw the site and approached me about financial literacy for kids. We might collaborate on an after school club next (school) year.
Professional Improvements
For now, this is creating a website showing off a portfolio of what kind of websites I can do. Like most things, I got a start on that website, but my progress has stalled. I’m not optimistic about moving forward on this for the year.
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)
At the end of April, my average weight was 174.9 pounds, which was a gain of 2.2 lbs from last month. My body fat was 23.4% which was a gain of 1.3%.
That may look bad, but we were on vacation for the last two weeks of March. That included a cruise with all-you-can-eat food. I gained about 7 pounds, so April had a lot of those numbers in the average. By the end of the month, I was around 173 – close to the average before the cruise.
The body fat percentage is disappointing. Usually, if I do a 5k race, it’ll drop a lot for a while. The weather is getting better and I’ll look to do that soon. I don’t know if it’s reasonable to get it down to 19% as it says in my goal.
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. April was a good month for diet. After eating a lot on the cruise in March, it was time to get to work on better eating. However, it wasn’t a great month for exercise. It rained a lot, and it was hard to get out for walks.
At the end of April, I had 87 points, which at almost 22 points a month is a pace of 264 points. That’s not going to get me to my goal of 300.
I measure brain points on the same scale. They are based on doing things like the daily Wordle and New York Times Connections.
At the of April, I have 46 brain points. That’s a pace for only 138 points for the year. I’m low on this, but I feel like I’m keeping my brain sharp with a lot of the other stuff I have going on.
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. I started taking my blood pressure and graphing it for my primary care physician. My blood pressure in January averaged 138/92. I’m taking lisinopril 10mg, which was something like $3 for a 90-day supply. At first, the doctor gave me 5mg, and it wasn’t doing enough.
April was the first month that I took 10mg for the whole month. I took my blood pressure eighteen times, and it averaged out to 121/80. This is close enough to the goal.
Doctor Appointments
I didn’t have any doctor appointments in April. I need to look into booking a Cologuard test soon.
Longevity Research
I made no progress in getting a DexaFit scan scheduled. I couldn’t fit it in before the vacation and I wanted to get back in the swing of health stuff after. Other than that, getting my blood pressure and colon test are more important right now.
Hobbies
Boost AI Skills
I want to get better at the following:
- Google Notebook LM
- Creating AI human video avatars
Once again, no progress.
3D Printing
I had this on my list all last year as I have a 3D printer, but I haven’t been able to load the filament correctly. It feels like I should be able to carve out a half hour and move forward with this. Yet, here we are, and it’s still on the list.
Journaling
I should be keeping a journal of some kind. Lazy Man and Money is my money journal. The goal is a journal for everything else. This is a lower priority than some of the other things above that I am more interested in.
Here are some other ideas of things I want to work on this year:
- Learn to fly a flight simulator
- Play a modern song on a ukulele
- Rubik’s Cube – I can solve it, but I am thinking about learning an advanced algorithm to do it faster. This is unlikely to happen
You may recognize the last two of these hobbies from my brain health goals for 2025.
That’s a big zero improvement in hobbies this month. The kids and I enjoyed rock climbing on the cruise, so maybe we’ll add that to the mix.
Family
Declutter and Organize House
In April, I put in a solid effort to clean the garage and got about 15-20% done. That’s not great, but it’s noticeable. We had plans to get more done, but my wife had to reschedule some work travel, so it got moved to May.
The seats for Adam Conover were much better. It was general admission and we got there at a good time.
Travel
We’re looking to 2026 travel even though we haven’t finalized our 2025 travel. My wife is aiming a cruise that can get her continuing education credits at the same time. The cruise requires booking long in advance – hence why we are looking into it now.
Upcoming trips:
- June – Annual trip to Block Island. It’s cheaper during shoulder season, and we can get there by short drive and ferry. I love to get away from technology for a little while.
- August – We’ve just started planning this, but it looks like we’re taking a road trip to Toronto and stopping at the sights along the way. None of us have ever been to Toronto, so it’s something new. We can stop by the Basketball Hall of Fame, the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Niagara Falls on the way. We can come back through Hershey, Pennsylvania, and American Dream in New Jersey, which are two of the kids’ favorite places.
- December – Usually, we try to go to Aruba around this time. It’s always hard to fit it in with the kids’ break and getting back for Christmas. We sold our use of the timeshare this year, and it was more than expected. That money will for most of our costs for the June and August travel.
Kids
The kids continue to do their elite private school thing. It’s getting absurdly expensive, but my wife’s military discount gives us a big discount. We went to a secondary school fair to look at high schools. Next year, we’ll have a 7th grader and have to take it more seriously. I’m advocating for regular public school. I was thinking about dual enrollment in a local community college. My wife feels that public school will be too easy. She also thinks he’ll get some merit-based aid, so it won’t be expensive.
They are completely opposite directions, but both are valid. We’ll have to see how it goes.
After School Activities
That 6th grader has a full schedule with a Hello Dolly performance next month. He’s closing out the year in Scouts by trying to get his second class in. We’re still trying to squeeze in the last few classes before he earns his black belts in karate. The 11-year-old has lacrosse most days of the week. He’s about to earn his Scout rank (the first one). He’s been able to get more of the black belt classes in because it doesn’t conflict as much.
I think we’ll take it easy this summer.
Summer Camps
We’ve almost got these nailed down. When my wife gets back from travel, we’ll try to fill in the last couple of spots.
Final Thoughts
I’m disappointed that I never seem to make progress on the hobbies. I have to do more to explicitly “schedule” them in. Often, I realize that the month has gone by when I’m making this report.
Unfortunately, I am making this realization while my wife is still traveling, so my time is even more limited than usual.
