1st property

So we bought our first investment property last week. I say "we" because I find myself
being more involved in than originally planned. The plan is to rent it out.

It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath condo that is near where the University of Colorado hospital & Children's hospital moved to. The interior is absolutely disgusting. The walls were stitcky. The carpet was black with filth. And it smelled so bad that you could only be inside for a little while before feeling nauseaous.

Here are some of the before pictures. The work will be completed next week and I'll post after pictures then.

This is the bathroom, and yes, it was seriously that filthy. Not sure what the contractors are using but it will sparkle when all is said & done.

This is the living room. The carpet was originally light gray. Could you imagine walking on this???

Another angle of the living room. Notice how filthy the vent is too.

The kitchen.

After we moved the refridgerator. Gross. Makes me want to clean behind mine!

And here was the stove. Would you ever cook on this?!?

Resolutions

So I do not normally make New Year's resolutions. I can't even remember the last time I did. You always hear how no one keeps the resolutions they make. So to me I have always thought what is the point, why make a resolution if I won't end up following through with it anyway. Why waste the time?

But I have been changing my thought process over the last few weeks. Helping Ben with his businesses, I have noticed the way to be successful is to plan. If you do not have a solid business plan & focus, your business cannot thrive. And then I saw an article somewhere that talked about how the best chance you have to make your New Year's resolutions stick is to make a specific plan before you start of how you plan achieve. (Of course, I can't find that article again to link to it.)

So I have decided to give the whole "making New Year's resolution thing" a try. Here are the few that I have:

1. Financial Security
- this one is pretty self-explanatory, we want to get to the point where we do not have to worry about having enough money each month. We are very close, just not quite there yet.
2. Get healthier
- I want to get to a healthy body fat percentage. I do not care so much how much I weigh, as long as I am healthy.
3. Organize our house & lives.
- Over the next year, I want to go through each room of our house & organize everything. By next Christmas I do not want to spend 30 minutes searching for my spreading knives. I want to know exactly where they are & be able to get them easily. (I never did find them this year, who knows which of the multitudes of storage I have of where they can be...)
4. Continue working on my own business
- I have no idea what my plan is for this one. Or even what I want to accomplish. I still need to figure all that out. But it is on the list so that I do not put it off.

We have a whole detailed plan of how we plan to accomplish each of these. (Well, all except for #4 that is.) I didn't want to put it all here & bore you to death. But there is a plan in place for each.

So do you have any resolutions you are making this year?

Happy New Year!

How did you spend your New Year's Eve? I spent mine in the hospital with Ben. On Sunday he wasn't feeling too well & so he called the on-call doctor to see if we could wait until the morning when he had a follow-up appointment with the doctor or if we needed to go the ER. Of course, he told us to go to the ER. That's our luck, right?

They found that the hernia has ruptured. It is not nearly as big as it was the 1st time, which is good. We are not sure what exactly caused it to tear; it could have been a cough, a sneeze, twisting wrong, or losing his balance on the ice. He has been very careful about what he lifts so most likely it wasn't that.

But he still has to have surgery to repair it again. The surgery is scheduled for some time tomorrow afternoon.

So that is how I spent mine. Hope yours was better than mine.