Hi there.
Bought and rehabbed a triplex near a big city. By many mustachian accounts, this is a great location for us (close to everything, public transit, etc). If it's fully rented, we cash flow while living there.
We are not fully rented right now. Part of the issue is that we need to fix more things in the property, and that costs money and time, but we hope to have tenants in the next month or two. The other thing is that we accumulated some debt to finish the property and we thought we could refi by now, but a lien from an a-hole contractor prevents this. We are working on removing the lien but it's taking time and money. Also we borrowed money from a friend to help finish this property so they are living there free for six months to pay them back. I hope to have a tenant in the other unit again by Sept 1.
I work in another area and am 18 miles from work each way. My job is pretty new still. I could take the train + bus but it will make for a loooong commute. Train + bike seems doable but I'm nervous because it involves some really busy streets no matter how you slice it. Open to radical ideas. We looked at moving closer to work but we would be much further away from the kinds of walkable amenities we love now (we have a 90+ walk score in our current neighborhood, and I work in the suburbs, so we would have fewer amenities if we moved). I have the option of working from home 1 day a week. Mr. Chestnut24 works from home full time.
IRS filing status: Married, filing jointly. I am 32; spouse is 34. We live in the Midwest near a major city.
Gross Salary/Wages: Before any deductions: I make 127,500/yr. base. Husband makes about 50k/yr.
Individual amounts of each Pre-tax deductions: 401k: I put in 4% and receive a match right now. Considering suspending contributions. My husband has a special retirement program where he forfeits 5% of his salary to the retirement plan and receives a 10% match.
Rental income: 1750/mo starting Sept 1. As of March 1, 2018, will be $3500/mo
Adjusted Gross Income: 127,500 (me, base), + 20k (me, bonus) + 50k (husband) + ~ (historically) 18,000 in rental income - 4% of my salary - 5% of his salary = about 207k (before taxes).
Assets: 3-flat building worth $650k with $277k of debt on it
Take home pay after taxes, insurance, and 401k (just putting enough in to get the match - 4%): ~3100 biweekly (me, does not include bonus which was just paid out to those who were here - job is new - and will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 20k next year)
Husband: 2800/mo
Empty apartment, when rented, should fetch $1750 or so. Other apartment is occupied by friends as a way of paying off the debt we owe them (about 10,600)
Liabilities:
Property has a $277k note @ 4.25%, PITI is $2848/mo incl. PMI. Property is probably worth $650k+ when totally finished. Maybe 520k now? We would need to refi to get out of our PMI (about $200/mo). Taxes are about $700/mo. Actual P+I is $1450.
Groceries + eating out: apparently $550. Yeah, I need to get this down. Working on it.
Phones $125/mo - looking into other options, like Republic Wireless...
Car payment $433/mo including extended warranty (remaining: 16k @ 4.99%). We have just the one car.
Utilities: ~$150/mo
Gas - $120/mo
Attorney (see above) - about 1k/mo right now
YMCA - $100/mo
Other debt service:
Student loan - 4% variable - $2900 (50/mo)
Discover card - 0% for 15 mo - $3499 (75/mo)
other Discover card - 0% for 19 mo - $9000 (150/mo)
Personal loan (also accumulated finishing the building) - 3 year term, currently $15k (769/mo) - 6.79%
Chase card - this is the doozy - 20% - $23k (550/mo or so)
Other student loan - 65k @ 6.8% - (841/mo)
We had more debt but got rid of it (!)
1. Should I start taking the train full-time to and from work? If I got a regular monthly pass it'd be $150/mo. I think the bus is free through work or something like that. Will check into it today. I shouldn't be driving in that traffic anyway.
2. I am also open to other ideas/thoughts/etc on how to tackle this debt. We have been paying it down but holy crap, it's a lot still. If we moved, we could probably rent something somewhere for $1100 close to my work, and could rent our apartment for $1800, but I don't know how long we'd want to be there and there might be some other issues and costs tied up in that.