A birthday reflection for September 22, published a little early.
I’m 44.
That sentence feels a little strange to type.
Not because 44 feels old. It doesn’t.
Mostly because when I was younger, I had a very different picture of what life would look like by now.
I assumed there would eventually be some magical age where everything became settled.
The houses would stop breaking.
The tenants would all pay on time.
Contractors would answer their phones.
Businesses would run smoothly.
Money would stop flying out of my checking account like it had somewhere better to be.
Apparently that age is not 44.
This year has been a lot.
I’ve dealt with properties that wouldn’t sell, tenants who wouldn’t pay, contractors who disappeared, foundations that needed fixing, retaining walls, boilers, sprinkler heads, insurance, city notices, and enough random invoices to make me question why I ever thought owning real estate was passive.
At one point I was ready to burn the inventory, burn the rentals, and tell everyone to fuck off.
I didn’t.
Mostly because arson seemed like another expense.
The Biggest Thing I Own Is Still My Time
I left my W-2 life years ago.
And even during the ugliest stretches of this year, I have never seriously wished I could go back.
I spent 15 years working in movie theaters.
Free movies.
Free popcorn.
Plenty of good memories.
I don’t miss it.
Not even a little.
Because today, even when my schedule is chaotic, it’s my chaos.
I can walk my dog in the middle of the day.
I can drink my tea.
I can list something on eBay at 10 in the morning.
I can deal with a contractor at noon.
I can go for a walk when my head is full.
I can decide that today is enough and tomorrow can have the rest.
That freedom still matters more to me than almost anything I own.
This Was the Year Real Estate Tested Me
Real estate has made me money.
It has also aged me approximately 117 years.
This year reminded me that property ownership is not passive income.
It’s active bullshit with rent attached.
There were foundations.
Retaining walls.
Late rent.
Move-outs.
City inspections.
Garage springs.
Broken sprinkler heads.
Properties sitting on the market longer than I wanted.
And, because apparently the universe has a sense of humor, a realtor managed to drive over sprinkler heads at one of my listings during a showing.
I paid the sprinkler guy again.
Passive income. ❤️
But something important also happened this year.
I finally got better at not carrying every problem myself.
Hiring Bryce in Toledo changed a lot for me.
I started seeing what happens when you put dependable people in place instead of trying to personally drag every repair, notice, turnover and contractor across the finish line.
That lesson may ultimately be worth more than any individual property.
I Built More Things
The Frugal Gay kept growing.
Cheap Cheap Closeout became a real standalone business instead of just another sales channel.
I started moving more inventory directly, supplying resellers, testing wholesale, and watching products travel through an ecosystem I never could have imagined 20 years ago.
I launched Glass City Finishings.
I published more.
I wrote about the insane ROI of paint.
I wrote about the death of the in-store shopping experience.
I wrote about spending nearly $37,000 in one month and how almost none of it was lifestyle.
And I finally wrote about being 25 during the 2008 financial crisis, working a second job at Ross, eating free movie-theater popcorn, selling free magazines to Half Price Books for $12 or $17, and doing whatever I needed to do to keep three rental doors alive.
That article reminded me of something.
I’ve been figuring shit out for a long time.
I’m Still Frugal. Just Differently.
At 25, frugality meant no cable, cheap meals, a paid-off car and taking extra shifts.
At 44, it looks different.
Sometimes it means buying liquidation instead of retail.
Sometimes it means fixing something instead of replacing it.
Sometimes it means refusing to buy another pallet just because it looks cheap.
Sometimes it means saying no to a project because my cash has somewhere more important to go.
And sometimes it means staying home, walking Aldi, drinking tea, doing laundry and watching a movie I’ve already seen 20 times.
There’s a version of frugality that is about deprivation.
That’s never really been what interested me.
For me, it’s about control.
I want my money going toward things that matter to me.
And I want as little of my life as possible being dictated by bills, debt, obligations or somebody else’s schedule.
I’m Trying to Get Lighter
Not just physically, although I’m working on that too.
I mean lighter in general.
Less inventory I don’t need.
Fewer unfinished projects.
Fewer bad business relationships.
Fewer people who require constant chasing.
Fewer things sitting around my house because “maybe I’ll sell it someday.”
Less emotional real estate occupied by people who don’t deserve the square footage.
That may be the theme of 44.
Not necessarily getting bigger.
Getting lighter.
Some People Stay. Some People Don’t.
One of the strangest things about getting older is realizing how much your life changes without asking permission.
There are people in old photos who once felt permanent.
My dad is still here.
My sister isn’t.
That alone will change the way you look at time.
There’s a picture of us together before she died, and now I look at it differently than I ever could have when it was taken. Back then, it was just a picture.
Now it’s a piece of a life I can’t get back.
And then there are relationships that don’t end because someone dies.
They just change.
I have a college picture with my brother Joey from a time when we were close enough that I never would have imagined where things would eventually land.
Life is weird like that.
Some people disappear because they have to.
Some people disappear because eventually you realize peace is more important than forcing a relationship to remain what it used to be.
At 44, I’m much less interested in pretending every relationship needs to be saved.
Some do.
Some don’t.
Some people deserve more of your time.
Some deserve less.
And occasionally you look back at an old picture and think:
Could you fucking not?
I think one of the biggest things age has taught me is that time is not infinite.
Not with your parents.
Not with your siblings.
Not with your spouse.
Not with your friends.
Not even with yourself.
So I’m trying to spend more of it with the people who make life better, and a whole lot less of it trying to convince people to be someone they clearly don’t want to be.
That feels like another version of getting lighter.
I Still Have a Lot I Want to Do
There are businesses I want to grow.
Properties I want to finish.
Things I want to sell.
Places I want to travel.
People I want to help.
Money I still want to make.
And yes, probably several more ridiculous pallets of inventory I’ll convince myself are a good idea.
But I don’t feel the same pressure I used to feel to prove something.
I already know I can work.
I already know I can survive a financial mess.
I already know I can build something from almost nothing.
I already know I can make money from things other people overlook.
Now I’m more interested in what all of that buys me.
Time.
Peace.
Choice.
So Here’s to 44
I’m not entering 44 with everything figured out.
Thank God.
That sounds boring as hell.
I’m entering it with businesses I built, properties I somehow kept alive, people I love, a dog who thinks every chair belongs to him, a husband who occasionally saves the day by going to Aldi for drinks, and more freedom than 25-year-old me would have known what to do with.
There are still bills.
There are still problems.
There will absolutely be another contractor who doesn’t answer the phone.
But there will also be walks.
Tea.
Good meals.
Ridiculous inventory finds.
Movies.
Travel.
Generosity.
And hopefully a little more peace.
At 44, I don’t need everything to be perfect.
I just want more of my life to actually belong to me.
That still feels pretty damn rich.