Wow! Talk about working on this blog consistently… Smh
It has been almost 3 months since the last time I posted. I was supposed to write a few more blogs about what my current goals were for the year of 2024, but clearly that has not happened. Well to start off, one of my goals for this year was to buy at least one more property to bring my total up to 4. Once I had my 4th property, the plan was to find a place for my girlfriend and I to move into. There were a lot of hiccups along the way, but it looks like things are finally looking up.
I was not able to get financing for a conventional loan because my debt-to-income ratio was above the 50 percent threshold that the bank was requiring. Therefore, I had to go with a business commercial loan to receive financing on a property that is currently under contract. I had to settle for a condo unit instead of a single-family home because the down payment on a single-family home would have been outside of my range. This loan requires that I put 25 percent down instead of the 5 percent down that a conventional loan allows. As a result, a small condo unit is what I settled for.
Where have you been?
The past few months I have been primarily dealing with work, school, and the housing market. It was by far the toughest school semester I’ve had since my time at the University of Central Florida. I still had to drive to St. Petersburg every Tuesday morning for my in-person classes. Gas, food, coffee, tolls, and hours missed from work were making my wallet bleed week in and week out. Thankfully, that is over, and I can say I successfully passed all my classes.
Work on the other hand, has had its own set of challenges. We have an entire new software system that we are implanting and the learning curve has been brutal. The hours have been extended and the productivity is down. These are things that are expected when someone tries to implement something new that changes the flow of operations. While it was expected, it doesn’t make the workday any easier.
The supervisor promotion that I was supposed to get was also postponed. Something about the budget blah blah blah. I expected as much. Good things like that don’t tend to come to me without some resistance. I’m not complaining. I’m just stating how the rollercoaster tracks of my life are built. However, I did receive an 80-cent raise to get me by for the next few months until the promotion can come into play. I also worked something out with my manager in private since I’m taking on all the supervisory responsibilities without being the supervisor on paper. All this is good for the meantime. The only downside is that the work days have been a bit more frustrating and have worn me out to the point that I do not have a lot of energy to do anything else once I get home.
In these past 2 and a half months I managed to drop down to about 178 pounds. I feel and look better. I’ve been able to play basketball again between 1 to 2 times a week, although I think I should limit myself to only once a week because my knees have not been doing the best. They typically swell up for a day or two after I play. I’m going to keep monitoring them for the next couple of months to see if the swelling starts to lessen as I continue to strengthen them.
Other Miscellaneous Problems
The state of Florida has been stealing my money every time I send a check for my embalmer’s internship. They did it last year when I applied for the embalmer’s apprenticeship, and it looks like they are doing it again with my concurrent internship license. They will cash in the check and not even tell me that the application is wrong or that other documents are missing until I call them. When I call them, they tell me that they sent an email out (which is a lie) and that I need to pay the fee again for them to process it. I’m hoping they don’t do this to me again with the concurrent internship because it costs 205 dollars. That’s a lot of money for me. I will check tomorrow to see the current status of the application since it has been 3 weeks since I sent them my application and the check has already been cashed. This legalized state thievery is asinine.
My open insurance case from 2021 has finally came to a close, and the HOA will reimburse me a whopping 700 dollars while they keep the rest of the money. That’s sweet of them.
Next Up
The next challenge is ahead if everything works out with this condo. The closing is soon, and my fingers are crossed that everything works out. I will have get some contractors into 2 of my properties ASAP. The condo hasn’t been inhabited in 2 years because the owner got stuck in Ukraine. They went to go visit, and then the Russians attacked. That is an unfortunate situation for the owner. As for me, that means that the house has a lot of TLC that it needs. There are also a few issues that require attention at my other property, so I want a plumber and HVAC tech to go out there as well. For the next couple of months, I will be working on 2 properties to make sure that they are up to standard for my tenants and myself.
I also need to sit down and figure out some new income-producing ventures. My expenses have been skyrocketing the past couple of years. I have a few ideas that I’ve been mapping out, so once I get these things situated it will be time to research them extensively and choose which one I will go all in on.
Welp! That’s all I have for now. Until the next check in!