I’m documenting my path towards reaching $30,000 in annual passive income by 2025 and a $1 million net worth by 2027.
For detailed numbers, you can check out my net worth tracker. I update it monthly.
We’re 32 entries into this series.
And we’re starting a new chapter in a brand new place.
We Made It to Houston!
In what was a pretty stressful month, we packed up our townhouse in Chicago, hopped on a plane to Houston, and moved in to our new home.
We’ve finished up a good chunk of the rehab on our new property, minus a few outstanding items.
We have some final touch ups to do on the interior.
We’re getting the bathrubs tubs and countertops re-glazed.
Lastly, and more significantly, we’re having all of our windows replaced (while upgrading from single to dual pane windows).
Sometime within the next 12 months or so, we’ll likely replace the roof. If and when we do that, we might add solar panels as well, depending on what credits we can get.
In the meantime, we are slowly unpacking.
We’ve spent a lot of money in the last month and it’s been pretty uncomfortable.
I’d like to stop funneling a ton of money into our new primary residence and instead look for ways to increase my cash flow in the meantime.
In total, we’ve spent well over $60,000 on the rehab portion of the house – we’re also going to be spending about $15,000 in the coming weeks.
And we won’t recoup the entire rehab in equity (which I didn’t really expect to do anyways).
Regardless, I’m planning do a detailed before-and-after breakdown of the entire renovation. We did some major work and it’s turned out really nice, so I’m excited to share when it’s all done.
September 2022 Net Worth Numbers
As a reminder, my net worth last month was at $109,378.87.
Assets – September 2022
We have quite a bit less cash than last month, and that’s because we’ve been pouring it into the house.
In an ideal world, all of that cash would be turned to equity – unfortunately, a good chunk of it won’t.
Our cash flow situation is less than ideal because we have a lot of big expenses to take care of.
For example, we had to pay about $7,000 for movers just to get our stuff from Chicago to Houston. That’s not counting the flight to Houston and the many other little things here and there that will quickly add up.
Thankfully my wife will be making a some extra cash via a moving reimbursement which will cover part of the mover fee we paid. We won’t get to see that for probably another month or two, but that’s part of the deal she got for picking her employer in a new state.
In other news, I bumped the value of our new primary residence up to $330,000.
It might be worth more or less. But I’m not planning to sell anytime soon anyways. So I’ll probably leave it at that number for a while, barring a major market turn.
In total, that means our assets have fallen to $1,095,130.32.
Liabilities – September 2022
Our credit card balances are pretty hefty right now. A lot of this balance is attributed to our mover fees.
The government has announced a new helicopter money program, where we could potentially see $10,000 of the student loan balance get shaved off. We’ll see.
If any of that balance ends up getting waived, I’ll mark it here.
The student loans still have a 0% interest rate, which has now been kicked off until January (just as I suspected!). We’re still not in a rush to pay those right now.
Additionally, the contractor balance I’ve marked here will probably be a bit higher than this when everything is said and done. We have a few big projects left that I wanted to at least partially account for now.
Most of that will probably be coming out of our HELOC. We have something like $14,000 left in remaining balance before we max it out.
I do want to get the HELOC paid down as quickly. It’s variable rate and rates are rising steadily, so it’d be nice to get that balance down.
We’re in a similar boat with the M1 Finance margin loan.
This leaves our liabilities at $1,001,673.13.
My Net Worth – September 2022
Our net worth has decreased to $93,457.19.
That’s a total loss of $15,921.68 from the previous month.
That leaves our debt ratio at 91.47%.
And our passive income remains at about $1,100 per month.
What’s Next?
It was a very expensive month once again.
Thankfully, my wife starts her job very soon. She’s waiting on her licensure from the state of Texas so she can officially begin practicing audiology here.
We do still have quite a bit of furniture to look for, which will be a few grand more.
We may or may not buy a second car soon as well – we bought one shortly after moving down here, but Houston really punishes you for not having a car with how it’s laid out.
Maybe used car prices will be significantly lower by the time I’m trying to buy one (my wife will be the primary user of our current car).
For my career, I’m a big law attorney. We have hefty billable hour requirement to meet each year, and this is the last month of our billable year, which ends on September 30th. So it will probably be a very dense month.
In the meantime, I’m looking to acquire a small business to try to grow our cash flow position in a more significant way.
I’m looking for a lot of listings that have commercial real estate attached to the actual business being sold. Real estate is something that I’m pretty comfortable with, which makes the overall valuation game a bit easier for me.
And real estate is something that lenders really love, most of the time, so I think that would make financing easier, too.
Either way, I’d love to close on a business by the end of year, so that’s my short-term goal as of now.
See you in the next one!
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