My May 2017 Monthly Update

Before I married my amazing wife 11 years ago, I told her she would never have a boring life being married to me. These last six months have made that statement seem like an understatement. Since quitting my job in December of 2016, our lives have been an amazing whirlwind of excitement and change.

In March, I wrote about all the amazing things that have been going on in our lives. Here is a quick list:

1. Finished all the remodeling projects in my home to get it ready to sell
2. Sold my house in 5 days with the highest offer being $321,000 which is $24,000 over the asking price
3. Drove all my belongings to Phoenix Arizona where we planned on moving after we get back from our vacation
4. Went on vacation to Japan for six weeks with my family
5. Returned to California to go on many mini vacations
   1. Yosemite National Park
   2. Monterey Bay Aquarium
   3. Carmel by the Sea
   4. Lake Tahoe
6. Drove the entire family with everything that we own to relocate to Phoenix Arizona from Fresno California
7. Renovating our new house

This has truly been an exciting first six months not having a job keeping me from living the life I want to live. No matter how good a job is, it pales in comparison to not having a job. Now that we are getting settled here in our new life, it is really starting to sink in.

So, this month’s update is not as long as usual because all my time is focused on our move to Arizona. I have not done much to build the business because my time is need with the move and remodel of our new house.

Also, with passive income, my businesses run themselves and all I need to do is receive the money each month from them.

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So, here is an update on my passive income businesses for the month of May.

Real Estate Rental Property Business

In January, I purchased another property in Akron Ohio. The property was very well taken care of and the previous owners had lived there for 30 or more years.

The were originally asking $39,000 for the property. It sat on the market for a while so I offered $28,500. I thought that they would counter and we would settle around $33,000. In a good surprise, they took my offer.

For a negotiating tactic, I feel that taking the first offer is not the best decision. Once the seller took my first offer, I immediately felt like I should have offered lower. What they should have done was counter. I would have come up with my next offer. But, I’m am very glad they accepted it.

There were two major problems with this property:

1. Ridiculously gaudy wallpaper throughout the house.
2. No shower

My property manager advised that we remove the wallpaper and paint the walls AND add a shower. The price to do both of these was $6,000.

I decided to try to rent the property as is, with a good through cleaning, and see if we can get it rented.

After 2 months, we got someone to rent the place for $744 a month! No repairs, no shower added, etc. As is.

We may be able to get $800 if we did the $6,000 in repairs but I would never make my money back.

Rent to Own Problems:

One of the RTO properties is going through an eviction. The tenant lost her job so didn’t pay her rent.

On the 25^th of May, I started the eviction process. On the 26^th, she made her payment. Obviously I stopped the eviction but there still is the issue of the eviction fees. In every lease, it states that the tenant must pay the eviction fees if they want to stay in the property. This one is no exception.

I have given her the option to make payments to pay off the total fee. Each month, she is to pay another $25 on top of the rent to pay off the $225 eviction fee. It will take 10 months for her to pay it off but I hope she is able to stay in the place.

It is not my desire to get the property back. I really want her to own it. We will see if she is able to keep up the payments.

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Book Writing Business

My new book “Successfully Unemployed” is just about ready for publishing.

After many revisions, edits, and corrections, it is finally time to start the launch process. The launching of the a new book takes some planning and money. If you want your book to do well, you need to market your book and get as many people to help you launch it well.

In a future post, I’ll explain my launch plan and give you exactly the steps that I did to get my newest book to be a best seller and hopefully on the “New and Noteworthy” book on Amazon.

On June 26^th, the book will be launched to the world and I am super excited!

It is available for pre-order on Amazon.

You can find it here:

http://amzn.to/2rEpcif

A big thank you to everyone who helped with this process! You all were a huge help and I feel the book is so much better because of all your ideas, corrections, updates, etc.

Let me know how you are doing with your businesses you are building to quit your job. Leave a comment below.

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