[fatty]

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, I have been here but I have been putting a lot of my spare time in renovating a basement that I am going to rent out. Hopefully I will finish within the next couple of months.

Even though I am working on that side hustle, I want to share some other ideas that I have been working on in the past few months. But before I share, I only want to be able to do so on things which I have found to work for myself or for others that I know have done it. I don't want to recommend something to others that I wouldn't do myself. I plan on sharing some basement progress photos soon (it has been a long journey), but in the meantime I have been consuming personal development and finance videos on Youtube and wanted to share some that I felt were helpful.

First is that I love books. Either reading them or listening to them as audiobooks. Since Covid, I was working more at home and not being at my office I wasn't close to my preferred library. Even though I am back at the office I didn't get in the habit of going to the library routinely again. Instead, lately I have been working through my audible library and now I am looking to utilize the local library more and more. Here is a good video I came across for others that love reading, and want to do it on the cheap:

 

[fatty]

I am participating in @Rock And Roll's No Playing New Games In 2025 challenge, and he reminded me about this thread. Even though I haven't updated lately, I have still been working toward this goal.

I am now 47 years old, my plan is to be able to 'retire' by the time I am 50 years old. What does this mean? I won't necessarily stop working, but I would be able to leave my current job if I wanted to and work part time according to my schedule. When I was in my 20's and early 30's accumulating my backlog of games, I had a vision that I would retire early and play all of these games. Time has passed and I have also. While I still love gaming, my passion for my latter years has moved more toward an outward focus of not only improving my life, but others as well. A primary focus currently is my own children: biological and foster. This next 5 years will be a big impact on how their lives will go. 5 of the 7 kids are young adults and it requires a lot of time and teaching to go from transitioning from kid to adulthood.

My financial goal has changed just a bit from when I last posted it in this thread:

So that now brings me to where I am now. Opening my bank statement my current mortgages are at:

* Primary Residence - $104,688.53 (2.375% interest rate)
* Rental Property - $191,101.89 (5.5% interest rate)

My plan is to be debt free by January 1st, 2026. This will be a bit before I am 50. At my current income I won't be able to hit that so I am looking at different side hustles. This past year I have been selling off my video game collection (NES generation up to SNES). That brought be about $6,000 but you can only sell so much stuff until you run out of things to sell. I still have PS1 to sell next up, but I am holding off for now. To look for another side hustle I am now learning to trade stock options on the side. It has not been profitable yet, but I feel I am starting to turn the corner.

So my timeline now goes to December 31st, 2027 to be debt free. As of the end of 2024, my bank statement for my current mortgages are at:

* Primary Residence - $77,194.19 (2.375% interest rate)
* Rental Property - $161,020.18 (5.5% interest rate)

Total debt at the end of 2024 was $238,214.37. I really want to knock off this 5.5% interest mortgage, so I would like to get it to $115,000 by the end of this year.

I'll try to share what is working so far and what is not, hope you guys are hitting your goals as well.

 

[fatty]

 

[Rock And Roll]

I stalled out over the past 8 months. First I had laser eye surgery, which was $5000. Then I took a trip to Mexico (usually go somewhere warm during winter for a week). Replenished about $2000 into savings but then tax season hit and since I'm self employed I owed another $5000 on taxes. No big deal, that's part of the reason I put so much money away every month, I know I'll owe the government in the next year. But then a couple weeks later my car started making a funny noise that I couldn't repair myself and yeah... $1500. It's been an expensive few months for me. I'm hoping there are no more surprises and I can get back to saving now. I want to put away at least $2000 a month from now until the end of the year.