I hope everyone had a good 4th of July. That’s when I started writing this post, but it seems like a month ago now. I didn’t realize that we had to register for the main area to see the town’s fireworks, so we watched from the military base instead. I prefer watching from there as it has cheap food and drinks. However, I wanted to be in the main area so the kids had the opportunity to see friends and hang out with them.
Personal Update
If you read my update last month, you may have caught the most negative post I’ve written here in years. My wife was commuting every day to Boston, which is five hours round-trip. I usually do most of the kid care, but it meant that I had to do 100% of it. As my kids say, I just crashed out.
I’m in a much better place this month. We had our annual vacation to Block Island. It’s “city” (New Shoreham) is the smallest city in the smallest state (Rhode Island). Technology is limited, and nature is maxed out. The only downside is that this year we didn’t get a single sunny day. It was grey all day.
Here’s what else happened last month:
- My oldest son got a perfect score on the National Spanish Challenge. The only other perfect score in the class was a student whose parents are native speakers.
- We went to an outside church fair that we go to every year. It poured rain and we were unprepared. It was generally a horrible time. We didn’t stay long. In hindsight, I kind of liked the experience as we all got through it together.
- We did some more renovations on the rental property. Fingers crossed that it gets rented for August 1st or before.
- I played Rounders with a group of my son’s friends… and not my son. It was a get-together for the whole grade, but he went off and did something else with some of his other friends. The parents got to whoop up on a bunch of 11-year-olds. I learned that Rounders is something like Cricket. I don’t know what the differences are or why I am using capital letters for sports.
- My oldest son was in Hello Dolly. My youngest son seems to be focused on his summer goal of simply existing. It’s weird because he’s the one who usually wants to do stuff.
- We went to the Newport Navy Base’s Officers’ Club for dinner. It has great views and prices. They have live music on the weekends, so it’s a big draw.
- We brought the kids to Big Bounce America which had the largest bouncy house in the world. They didn’t realize how tired they’d get bouncing around. Ha ha, surprise exercise for the kids.
- We went bowling at the Navy base on a rainy day. I bowled a 140, which was the game of my life. I only bowl a couple of times a year, but it’s always between 85 and 110. In this 140 game, there was potential for better, but I had a 7/10 split on what I thought should have been a strike.
I’m not going to do pictures this month, because it’s taken quite a few hours to do this update, and I’m hoping to publish it late on a Friday. I had been writing this update in pieces over the last week, so I apologize if I explain a couple of things more than once.
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 June.
(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. 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, perhaps the last full article will make more sense.
Dog, Blog, and Web Income
Dog boarding income in June was my best yet. It’s not a surprise, as it is peak tourist season in Newport, Rhode Island. If we didn’t take those few days off to go to Block Island, I probably would have blown it out of the water.
Blog income continued to be terrible. I would make a lot money working at McDonald’s than typing up this report. At this point, I’m probably going to have to remove it from the report completely next year. It would just be round-off error. It doesn’t seem like it was long ago that I was making 40-50k a year.
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, I made $4,293.60 in income from these sources. It was the start of the shoulder season in Newport, but not a lot of people travel in May. When schools are in session, people tend to stick around. This month, the total dog/blog/web income was $5,043.35.
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 $30,000 a year after all expected expenses, including maintenance.
Four months ago, one of our tenants broke the lease and moved out suddenly. We’ve been renovating the property, and every month I say it’s almost done. It really is done this time. We have a couple of minor things like replacing the screen door, but it’s ready to be rented, finally.
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 June, Zillow estimated our properties were worth about $800 less than last month. That’s the first time it’s gone down in a while. As usual, we paid off about one thousand in mortgage principal. That meant that our EPO went from owning 83.31% of our properties to 83.47% of them. The rents (when they were both occupied) after expenses are $2,657/month. Using the equation above, our income from this area would be $2,218. That’s up $5 from last month. This number moves slowly and steadily.
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 easily invest the money into an ETF that pays a 2.5% dividend. For example, HDV currently yields 3.32%. The non-retirement brokerage account that we have pays about 2.7%, so I’m comfortable with the 2.5% estimate.
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 markets have continued to do well, reaching new highs through most of June. Last month, this number would have been $5,135. This month it is $5,381. That’s a whole lot better than the $5 that real estate moved.
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: $5,043 – Adjusted by 50% to $2,522
Rentals: $2,213 – Adjusted by 20% to $1,774
Dividends: $5,381 – Remains at $5,381
Dogs/Blogs Blue Line
Rental – Red Line
Dividend – Yellow Line
Total Adjusted Passive Income: $9,677
This is an increase from last month’s $9,052. The market and dog boarding are carrying the day on this number.
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. Using those 12-month averages, we’re at all-time highs in passive-ish income (includes dog boarding) and mostly pure passive income (rentals and dividends).
My goal for this passive-ish income is to reach $109,000 for the year. It’s up to $53,286 and on pace for $106,572. In the last few months, we’ve caught up some ground and might reach that $109K goal after all.
My wife continues to work as well. Last month, it looked like she’d retire very soon with the five-hour commute. However, now that Musk and DOGE have given way to common sense, it appears she won’t have to commute much anymore..
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.
I can’t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth rebounded with the markets. It was up 2.81% last month. For the year, it is up 6.64%. With all the uncertainty this year, it is a pleasant surprise from where I thought we’d be.
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 June, I made $37,674. So at the halfway point, it looks like I might pass it by $500. That’s cutting it close. I’ll consider it a win if my income is that predictable.
Complete Estate Planning
I got the estate planning documents from the lawyer back a few months ago. 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 and I’d get most of them in one day.
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 June, Kid Wealth had 44,169 lifetime views. It’s getting around 1,000 views a month now that it’s summer. It’s going to be close to getting to 50,000 page views towards the end of the year.
I could really use a partner or some motivation to make it into a business. I simply don’t believe the money is in blogging anymore. I still believe in the value of the written word, but I think it needs to be something else.
Maybe it could be a non-profit and receive some kind of grant money. I don’t know, but it’s a good brand 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 I doubt anyone buying it will give me any kind of ROI. It was never about making money, so selling it at a loss isn’t worth it to me.
Please reach out if you have any ideas.
Professional Improvements
For now, the goal is to create 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 June, my average weight was 171 pounds, which was a loss of 2.1 lbs from last month. My body fat was 22% which was a loss of 1%. These are averages over a whole month using my Fitbit Aria scale.
This is my lowest weight since April of 2016. It’s about 25lbs off from when I decided that I really needed to make changes. In 2023, my average for the year was 189. (It’s 173 for this year.) I’d like to say that I’ve developed some kind of amazing weight-loss secret, but it’s just the generic GLP-1s that you read about everywhere. I take a low dose, because my BMI at 26 isn’t too bad.
I think I have a decent chance of getting to the goal weight, but the body fat percentage isn’t looking great.
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. In June, I got more exercise in. I felt like I was always moving or doing something. It also had those few days in Block Island, where we hiked quite a bit. My diet has been pretty mediocre. I get into phases where I’m very vigilant with it, but that hasn’t happened for a while.
At the end of June, I had 131 body points. It’s a pace of 262 for the year, so this may fall short of the goal. It’s still 87% of the way there, so it’s a solid B+.
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, but I’ve been taking the easy way out and doing math instead of Japanese.
At the end of May, I have 68 brain points. That’s a pace for only 134 points for the year, but it’s a slight improvement. I gave myself credit for using AI to calculate my 401k millionaire date as well as using it to help manage the spreadsheets for my dog boarding business. It may sound weird to give my brain credit for using AI, but the AI actually taught me how to do some new things with spreadsheets along the way.
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 also had one at the end of the month. Fortunately, my wife is a pharmacist, and she’s coming to my doctor appointments now. It might be orthostatic hypotension and I’m reading that it can from low blood sugar could be a cause. That might make sense with the semaglutide that I’m taking.
In any event, this year I started taking my blood pressure and graphing it. My blood pressure in January averaged 138/92, which was high. I’m taking lisinopril 10mg, which costs around $3 for a 90-day supply. Wouldn’t it be great if all medicine were that cheap?
In June, I took my blood pressure 18 times, and it averaged out to 126/82. That’s still elevated, but better than it was. I have been using a cheap CVS blood pressure monitor.
I have noticed that most of the doctors’ offices use Omron ones. I have been eying this one on Amazon and hoping for a Prime Day deal. There was one! That’s an affiliate link, so I might make a couple of extra dollars if you click on it and buy it.
This monitor has a lot of bells and whistles, like an app that does weekly and monthly averages for me. It even produces a PDF that I can give to my doctor.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem like the app works with Google Health. Since I don’t have Apple stuff, I didn’t look to see if it can report information there.
Doctor Appointments
I didn’t have any doctor appointments in June. I still need to look into booking a Cologuard test soon.
Longevity Research
Another month and I made no progress in getting a DexaFit scan scheduled. It was almost impossible to do with my wife commuting so much.
In June, I started a new skin care regimen.
Hobbies
Boost AI Skills
I explained how I used AI to create better spreadsheets in my article, When Will You Become a 401 (k) Millionaire?. I also used it to upgrade my spreadsheet system for managing my dog boarding. It was quite complex. Maybe I’ll write an article about that too someday.
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…. month after month.
I tried to assign it to my kids, who are good with YouTube, but they failed me.
Journaling
I like the idea of journaling, but I don’t think I’ll get to it.
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. Update: This is unlikely to happen
You may recognize the last two of these hobbies from my brain health goals for 2025.
I didn’t do much on any of the above. I picked up a Rubik’s Cube and realized that I forgot some of the algorithms, so I guess it’s not the kind of thing that I can just put away for a couple of months.
I signed up for Masterclass, which I think can teach the ukulele, but I haven’t moved forward on that either.
Family
Declutter and Organize House (50% done)
In June, we didn’t do too much decluttering. There’s too much work going on at the rental property for now.
Travel
In June, we took our annual trip to Block Island. It’s cheaper during shoulder season, and we can get there by a short drive and ferry. I love to get away from technology for a little while. It’s really nice to tell people that you are on vacation and that you won’t be able to fulfill their request. I often feel like that’s one of the best parts of being on vacation.
Upcoming trips:
August – We’re taking a road trip to Toronto and stopping at the sights along the way. None of us has ever been to Toronto, so it’s something new. We are planning to stop by the New York State Fair and Niagara Falls on the way. We’ll come back through Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is one of our favorite places.
We have to do more planning for the August trip and then turn our attention to Spring Break.
Kids
It was great to finish up the school year. The kids got good grades, and it was very successful. Our oldest, 12, was in a local Children’s Theater play. At this point, he’s been in so many that they seem to blend together. I’m typing this in early-mid July, and he’s performing in another one tonight. He has another one a couple of weeks after that.
My younger son, 11, really got into stop motion video. He’s creating some incredible stuff with Lego minifigs. I also got him a cartooning app on a tablet, and he drew some amazing things on the first day… and then seemed to forget it exists. He’s upset that he can’t draw people as well as he wants.
After School Activities
We are taking it easy this summer with not much after camp. We tried to do karate, but my wife and I were busy at events all week and couldn’t attend them. Boy Scouts meetings are somewhat limited in the summer.
Summer Camps
Summer camps are ongoing now. So far, so good.
Final Thoughts
June was a much better month than May. I really needed all those requirements from other people to stop. In particular, there were too many events from the kids’ school. It’s a lot better to get away and do our own stuff.
I may do a little better on some of the hobbies and stuff on here going forward because I’ve put together a daily “To Do” spreadsheet that has more of these monthly items in it. I have a little more work to refine it. I also have to make it a habit to review and use the spreadsheet.
