2025 Wrap Up

For this year we have had a large focus on continuing to build our real estate footprint. It’s been an exhausting year.

Major Real Estate Investing:

7 Unit: We bought a 7 unit mixed use building in 2024. In 2025 we rehabbed and rented 4 units, evicted 2 non paying tenants, 1 of them was an inherited tenant paying way below marker rate.  Lots of work on this building. I assisted Mrs. C’s Uncle with Stucco wrapping the chimney. We also added a laundry room by taking a room out of one of the remaining commercial units that hasn’t been rented out yet. We have a commercial unit almost complete, which needs only a couple more days of work before we can list it. I continued my war on the weeds in the parking lot. I am hopeful to either in 2026 or 2027 to repave the parking lot. For now I at least want to keep the weeds at bay. I’m planning to spray at least once a month.

Finished rehab on Airbnb in our neighborhood: This house damn near killed me, both physically and financially.  This was way more work than I originally anticipated.  Unfortunately I was not able to get it listed until after the peak summer season. We got it listed at the very end of August. Carrying a house with no income for almost a year and spending 60K on the rehab was a lot. For now this house is mostly treading water. It has been more or less cash flow neutral, which for this time of year is fantastic.

Bought an additional Airbnb in our neighborhood: This house needed way less work. Most of the work we did was setting up the laundry room, and some of that we did after getting it listed.  After listing it we did have some problems with the water system and had to replace the pressure tank.  Most of the work was staging. We closed on the property on August 22nd and had the first booking on September 10th, just 19 days later. This is in stark contrast to the other one in our neighborhood that we purchased September 13th of 2024 and had the first rental August 29th of 2025, almost a full year later. We got off to a rocky start with this one. I am hopeful that it will be cash flow positive by the spring.

Bought a mobile home on land: This place needed some serious work.  This should be the last property I buy without inspecting the inside. We got this under contract the same time we bought the above mentioned house in our neighborhood. This was a substantial rehab from a work perspective but was not super expensive.

Created Action Plan For Selling Two Properties in 2026: Both of these are in the city of Benton Harbor and economically do not make sense to keep as rentals. The property tax assessments in the city have gotten out of hand and we make very little money on these properties. It is time to start pruning our unproductive properties!  The first one we have been working on since mid December and we hope to have it listed by the end of January.

We plan to sell both of these properties, pay off their debt and use the additional proceeds to pay down on our other real estate.

Work:

This was a dual outage year at the nuclear plant I work at. Every 3 years is a dual outage year. Outage season is stressful and with my increased responsibilities with recruiting and budgeting in addition to my operational roles has increased that stress over a longer period of time than normal.  I did take some positive steps to turnover some of my pre-outage operational work to a coworker of mine during the fall outage and will continue that going forward.

My W2 job provides health insurance at a relatively low cost and the biggest benefit is that it separates our income from our health insurance costs.  Once I no longer have this job our health insurance costs will be determined by our income under the ACA.  Obamacare premium costs have been soaring and our income is increasing, so I am not really looking forward to that.

My W2 job has a 401K plan where I get their full match if I contribute 8% of my income and they contribute 5%. They offer a Roth 401K and I take advantage of that.

I worked 395 hours of overtime this year, so I am certainly thankful that the “no tax on overtime” law has passed. The extra tax I have paid in throughout the year due to this tax law change will be applied to the tax cost of a Roth conversion we did this year.

Kids:

Kid 1: Kid #1 is 22 and in the midst of planning a wedding for this summer. His girlfriend moved here from NY last year and now works at the same place he does.  They adopted a stray cat this year bringing their furry friend total to 4.

Kid 2: Kid #2 finished his remaining few requirements to earn his Eagle Scout rank.  He will officially be an Eagle Scout at the next rank advancement meeting.  He graduated from high school early in November of last year and got a full time job in March.  He was been working full time and saving more than half his money since then, setting himself up for a great financial start to life.

Kid 3: Kid 3 played both football and basketball this year. He also raised a pig for FFA this year that he showed at the fair, this was his 2nd year raising animals, last year he raised both a goat and a pig. Kid #3 has a really big 2026 ahead of him.  Drivers ed training in April, scout trip to Philmont NV in June, and Redbud camping in July.

Kid 4: Kid #4 also played both football and basketball this year and was on the same teams as his brother: Kid #4 is my little guy and he is about a foot shorter than most of the kids he is playing against in football and basketball.  In Football he had 2 highlights in the same game. He made an interception and caught a pass of roughly 15 yards. In middle school football they don’t pass the ball much and he was super stoked to make the catch. With him being a much smaller player getting any game time is great. He also raised a pig with FFA. His pig won light weight market burrow at the fair.

In August Cedar Fair / Six Flags annual passes for 2026 went on sale. We snagged yearly passes for all 7 of us with the ability to go to all the parks for $75 each.  Six Flags is having financial difficulties and it is possible some parks will close in the next year.  With the purchase of these passes we were also given access to the parks for the remainder of the 2025 season. We took a trip to six flags in Chicago and a trip to Michigan’s Adventure.  These trips have already covered the value of the passes we bought. In 2026 we will take at least 1 trip to Cedar Point and 1 trip to Kings Island.  Most of the trips we will take will be to Michigan’s Adventure since we can drive there, enjoy the park, and drive home in the same day.

End Of Year Move Out Blitz:

I have never experienced anything like this. Between October and December of 2025 we had 6 tenants move out, with 1 more declaring they will be moving out shortly.

Tenant 1: Tenant 1 had been staying up here temporarily for family support when she had a baby.  She used the almost 2 years she was up here to stockpile some cash and put herself in a better position. We knew from the start that she would not be staying very long term, so this move was expected.

I was still working 75 hours a week when this move out occurred and Mrs. C. handled 90% of getting the house ready for the next tenant.  I fixed a window and did a trash run, but thankfully didn’t have to do much.  A family friend of ours was looking for a place and moved in shortly after we got it back.

Tenant 2: This tenant has been a pain in the butt to work with since he moved in almost 3 years ago.  We decided to move forward with not renewing his lease after several repeated lease violations with no action to rectify them. He caused substantial damage to the house. The entire house needed repainted, we had to replace all the flooring, and replace a window, as well as several odds and ends tasks.  The flooring really irritated me. The floors were hardwood floors that I had refinished. He caused several deep gouges in the floors.  He also had a dart board on one of the walls and was terrible at Darts. Once I finished the outage getting this property flipped was a full time job. We had this house rented out in mid December.

Tenant 3: This tenant had fallen way behind on his rent. He had been mostly a good tenant and is the only tenant we have had in this property.  He had lived in this house for almost 5 years. This is a perfect example of why I suggest not to work with tenants and to file eviction the moment they are late.  He was making partial payments here and there, but each month the balance was growing.  By the time this came to a head he was effectively behind by 5 months.  When he moved out he left over 20 cubic yards of trash behind. This was especially frustrating because he needed two extensions to move out past the agreed upon date.  We had to replace all the flooring and repaint all the walls here as well. This is one of the houses we will be selling in 2026.

Tenant 4: This tenant had lived in this house for 6 years.  The lease had been month to month and the tenant was current.  He was moving for work.  This is the largest house we own with it being a 5 bedroom 2.5 bath 2400 sq. foot home.  This house was not in the cleanest manner, but at least no junk was left behind.  The worst damage was to the kitchen.  The cabinets were disgusting, the stove and a pantry were broken, and several chunks of the floor tiles were broken.  Other major damages were 2 broken windows and a broken bathroom sink.  This tenant moved out 3 days after Tenant 3 did. We are currently planning to turn this property into a duplex and will work on it after finishing the house we plan to sell.

Tenant 5: Tenant 5 lived in one of our 2 bedroom apartments, did not pay his rent in December and did not communicate with us to set up a payment plan.  He first communicated with us when we messaged him to follow up on the notice to pay or quit that we had sent in mid December.  He had some unplanned expenses and could no longer afford the apartment. He arranged to move out at the end of that week and at least did follow through on his word for this one. This should be a relatively quick flip back to being rented. He did leave behind 2 mattresses and 2 large couches.  I am SO SICK of tenants leaving behind mattresses and couches. They are such a pain to dispose of.

Tenant 6: This was our doing. We rehabbed the mobile home to move Mrs. C.’s oldest kid’s dad into it from our 6 unit apartment building.  Long term this move is a win win for everyone, but in the meantime has caused additional stress for everyone involved. We declared victory on this one right before Christmas. There are still a few odds and ends to complete here.  We have not started work yet on the apartment he moved out of.

Tenant 7: We planned to sell this property in the spring when this tenant’s lease was up, which would be the end of March.  This tenant messaged us in early December asking if we would let her out of her lease because she found another property, then stated she would move regardless.  That property fell through so she is currently staying, however it is likely she will move once she finds another option.

Upgrades:

We upgraded a few things in our lives this year:

Vehicles: We have been fairly frugal with vehicles forever, but recently it had gotten almost comical.  Mrs. C. was driving a 2008 Town and Country worth around $1,500 and I was driving the 2007 Odyssey worth around $1,000.  We briefly had a Ford Ranger worth around $2,000 but the transmission blew on it and we traded it away for some work on Mrs. C’s mom’s car.  For our net worth and income level having our total vehicles worth $2,500 is certainly laughable.

We upgraded both vehicles in the same weekend.  Mrs. C. now has a 2016 Odyssey with 125,000 miles, worth around $15,000.  I have a Toyota Prius with 160,000 miles worth around $6,000.  We still have the Town and Country, worth around $1,000 now to haul stuff with.  Even with these upgrades, we are still an economic outlier with how little of our net worth is tied up in vehicles.

I would like to upgrade to a plug in hybrid or full electric car in the near future. Possibly a Model Y or 3. I like the idea of being able to subscribe to FSD.

Lawn Mower: We upgraded our 42″ standard riding lawn mower to a 42″ cub cadet zero turn mower. It was on sale at Home Depot and we paid just under $3,000 after sales tax and delivery.  Now that we own 3 houses in our neighborhood and have a total of approx. 4 acres that needs mowed, having a more powerful, quicker mower makes sense.

Tools: At the end of the year Lowes was clearancing out their Flex brand power tools line. Most of these items were more than 50% off.  We paid under $800 for $2,000+ worth of tools.  My parents got us a Refurbished Ryobi set sometime around 2007/2008.  Ryobi is an entry level home owner/DIY brand. We are constantly working on stuff and upgrading our primary power tools to a professional line has long been needed.  We now have a circular saw, drill, hammer drill, impact, reciprocating saw, framing nailer, and job light, with a total of 6 batteries.  We aren’t getting rid of our Ryobi stuff. Ryobi has a wide range of tools and we have probably 20 different Ryobi tools. We plan to keep the basics as sets at our apartment buildings so we don’t always have to lug our tools across town.

Appliances: One of our final purchases from Bill’s Appliances in Niles before they shut down was a Speed Queen washer for only $500.  These retail for $2,200! Mrs. C saw the posting on their Facebook page and we bought it the next day when they opened. I think we bought it still in 2024, but we certainly did not install it until 2025.  This has been a great washer for our household of 5 and has been working great.

We bought a coin op washer and dryer for the apartment building. The money is mainly to offset the cost of the machine and the electricity usage.  Having a washer and dryer available in the building is a big step towards being able to retain tenants.

Upgraded the washer and dryer at 2nd Airbnb: This house came with a washer and dryer, but it was an older set and was slow. We really needed 2 dryers and a high efficiency washer. We bought a washer and 2 dryers for this location during a great sale at Lowes. We also upgraded Mrs. C.’s mom’s washer and dryer. We bought a total of 9 appliances during the Lowes December appliance sale.

Jo Ann Fabric Fixtures:

OK This was a bit crazy.  Jo Ann Fabrics went out of business and they were selling everything.  At our first trip we bought a few bins to attach to our peg wall in the pole barn, then my gears started turning.  We eventually spent over $2,000 buying TONS of fixtures from Joann’s.  We travelled to over a half dozen stores to find all the treasures. Their fixtures are way better than our current storage solutions and we decided to get while the getting was good.

There were 4 primary fixtures we bought:

7′ high 4′ long rolling displays: These disconnect in the middle and hold 1′ shelves on them. I currently have 2 of the 6 we bought set up at the Basement of one of our buildings to store our paint and flooring materials on.  The major advantage with these over our previous wood shelves is that it removes fire loading and metal does not rot.  Being able to move the shelves as desired is great too. These are an older fixture and were relatively unique. All Lozier racking shelves can fit on these as well. There are a pain in the butt to take apart and really heavy to move. The ones in the picture below do not have the 2′ end caps on them. 5 of the 6 we bought included those at no extra charge, and we got an additional 20% off, for $48 each! Honestly, in retrospect I wish I bought all of them!

Wall Racks: We bought the wall racks primarily to improve our pole barn storage. Currently we have installed 2 of the 7 sections we purchased.  3 of the sections we bought were from the newer store and looked like the one below.  We bought 4 sections from an older store for $160 each, which also included shelves. These are roughly 8 feet high by 4 feet wide.

Stand alone Gondola racks: We bought a 20′ long section of dual sided racks for a future store we would like to open. We bought this from a newer store, so these fixtures were only a couple years old. We paid $400 for this 20′ Gondola and it came with 30 shelves, which were priced at $10 each at the time.  We got a steal on this!

Wire racking: I bought 2 full walls of this stuff. We have primarily used this for fencing for goats and chickens. We have about a quarter of this left that will be used for shelving in the future. These have a variety of pieces that range from roughly 2′ wide to 4′ wide, with lengths from 5′ to 8′. Since these lie completely flat we were able to fit a ton in a minivan load.

Additional shelving: I went a little crazy here and bought dozens of shelves. I got a really good deal on the last day they were open and bought a ton of them. I bought extra deep shelves, extra skinny shelves, ones that are bars that I plan to hang wire from, and ones made for display boxes that will fit funko pops perfectly.  We bought a couple of the thread racks that automatically push forward to try storing sockets on. The vast majority of these were the standard metal 4′ shelves.

Additional pegs and attachments: I bought probably 100+ pounds of different types of pegs.

There may be some more I am forgetting, but this is the most of it. Most of these fixtures are stacked in the pole barn at our first Airbnb property.

Regrets:

Real Estate: There is a large commercial building right down the road from me that came up for sale in the Spring. I didn’t think much about it until the fall, but I realized this could be a good fit for a future business venture I would like to start. It would also have additional space I could rent out to other businesses.  We were squeezed on cash following the two back to back real estate purchases we made in the fall, but the property had been on the market for a while and I figured I had time.  I started the process for a commercial cash out refinance on our 6 unit short term rental property and that would give more than enough cash for the down payment.  My commercial lender told me that if I wanted to buy a building like that as long as I could come up with the 25% down payment I would be good.  I planned to finish rehabbing a house and schedule a showing after Christmas.  On December 15th I looked up the property and it was listed as “Active Backup”.  Someone else had it under contract. 🙁

Goats: We have had goats for a little over a year. Kid #3 raised a goat for FFA at his school and Mrs. C. and her dad bought the goat at the fair to keep as a pet.  We shortly bought another goat so he could have a friend and stop whining. Goats are herd animals and hate to be alone. We upgraded his cage several times over the year, and at the start of this year we had built a quarter acre fenced in area for the goats. The goat we had bought as a friend died at the start of winter and we either needed to buy another goat or get rid of the one we had. We chose to find him a new home, but we did not want him to be sold for dinner. We gave him away along with some supplies.

Roth Conversions: I decided at the end of the year to do a Roth conversion. Due to all the move outs and rehabs our income from rental activities was less than originally expected and we had room for conversions.  In retrospect it would have been much better to convert back in March/April when Tesla was trading at about half what it is now. I could have got twice the shares converted for the same tax payment.

2026:

2026 will still be a busy year for us.  For January through March we will likely still be plugging away to finish all these flips from people moving out.  2026 is a single outage year so I won’t go back to work until late July.  We have to get our oldest kid his drivers license this year. Kid #2 will likely be moving out before the end of the year, and we will be spending a lot of time on drivers training with Kid #3.

If we acquire any new real estate it will likely be multifamily properties outside of city limits that are more or less turnkey ready.  We will likely be paying closer to $100,000 per unit and be focused more on future value than current cash flow and forced appreciation through rehabs.

What was your 2025 like? What plans do you have in store for 2026?