Sorting It Out

Howdy y’all!! It’s a new year and things are getting back to normal. It’s a new normal and a new routine, but we sure are loving every minute.

It’s getting downright cold here in north central Texas! It’s moments like this where we do not miss living in our RV. Plywood and fiberglass was never conducive to a warm environment in freezing temperatures. The only thing worse than a full shitter would have been a frozen shitter. Yuck!! Thank god that never happened to us!

When we published our last blog our financial situation was clear as mud. We didn’t know how much we were paying for the house we built and already living in! We knew the cost of the construction, but that was only the starting point. None of the details had been finalized and they kept changing which made a frustrating situation even worse.

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Starting Anew

Hello there! It’s been awhile since we have posted a blog. It’s been even longer since we posted a blog that wasn’t a financial update of some sort. Over eleven months as a matter of fact. In that blog we wrote about buying our property in Texas and being excited to start building our home. Little did we know at the time we were in for a wild ride.

As we started our home building journey it quickly became clear that our original plan was not going to work out. The builder we had at that time was becoming very difficult to deal with. After discovering some questionable line items on our build budget that relationship came to a very abrupt and contentious end.

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August 2024 Financial Update

Welcome to our belated August 2024 financial update blog! We didn’t know if we would ever have a chance to get to this blog. We have been over the top busy with little time to spare.

In last months blog we said that we were on the verge of heading to Texas permanently. We wanted to be present for the final stages of our build and make sure everything was moving along. Well we made the move and have been living in a hotel since the middle of August.

It’s great to be so close so we can see the progress being made in person. It has also allowed us to be present to deal with some issues that have come up. The only downside has been the cost.

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July 2024 Financial Update

Welcome to our July 2024 financial update! It’s only been a couple of weeks since we posted our June 2024 financial update blog, but a lot has happened in that time.

It looks like we really getting down to the nitty gritty with our Texas home build. Last we saw the interior pieces are starting to come together. And as far as we can tell, at least through FaceTime, everything appears to be working out as planned. That’s a little weight off our shoulders. Not being on site to see everything person had us second guessing some things.

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June 2024 Financial Update

Welcome to our very late, and probably brief, June 2024 Financial Update. Better late than never I guess!

We were hesitant to even write this blog given how close we are to another month end. However, with everything we have going on there is no telling when we will be able to get to that month end blog either. So we are using this brief window of free time to give our update.

Since our last update we have traveled back and forth between Utah and Texas twice. Both trips required a lot of our attention as our home build is really getting down to the details. This stage is both exciting and a little scary. Our design choices starting to get implemented into the house so hopefully everything comes together as planned. The problem is that we are now 1,200 miles away and can’t be there to make changes on the fly if something doesn’t pan out. Hopefully when we get back there we don’t have an “oh shit” moment.

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May 2024 Financial Update

Welcome to our very belated May 2024 financial update. It seems that all of the cross country travel and probably some stress finally took its toll. Traveling was nice when we were doing it in a big luxury RV. We always had food and snacks in the refrigerator readily available. And when we were tired we would just hit up a rest area and sleep in our own bed. Traveling in a car with three people that is packed full with stuff is a completely different story however.

With our son completing college and getting ready to start his new career we had to empty his college apartment. For a minimalist person he had a lot of stuff! The car was completely packed and every nook and cranny was filled. And with his entire life in the car we didn’t want to leave the vehicle unattended. So with the exception of our three day stay in Texas to check on the our home build we ended up sleeping in the car, sitting upright when we stopped for the night. Not very much fun at all!

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May 2024 Dividend Portfolio Update

After a wild month it’s time for our May 2024 dividend portfolio update!

May is always kind of a wild card month and it’s not unusual to get the type of swings we had. Sell in May and go away? Meh! Our dividend portfolio reached another all time high once again. Then it came crashing down shortly after and we thought that was that. Of course we were wrong because it stabilized, rebounded and bam! Another all time high at the close of the month! It was quite the roller coaster!

While it was a fun ride we took a pretty significant hit to our PADI as you will see. The expected MMM dividend cut finally happened which is a setback. It pretty much wiped out half of the progress we made this year trying to reach our $1K PADI goal. It’s a little bit of a bummer when we can only take baby steps to begin with. So while the month was positive it wasn’t great because of this set back.

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