TwentyFrugal

 Every day I have enough time in the morning, commuting, and at lunch to listen to about 5 podcasts everyday. The 5 that I like listen to EVERYDAY are listed below. 1) Robinhood Snacks Daily - This podcast gives you 3 major forces affecting the economy every day. The two guys are long time friends and are hilarious together. I like to start with this one as a way of getting unbiased news that directly affects the economy.  2) The Indicator from Planet Money - This podcast is all about ideas. It usually references one to two main ideas that are affecting the world right now. It will then go into the direct implications. Instead of just giving bullet point news, it follows up with the actual implications.  3)Bigger Pockets Daily - Bigger Pockets is the real estate crew who coined the BRRRR method and has had a major part in changing the real estate environment. Each daily 10 minute podcast runs through a hot real estate "how-to" topic to educate listeners.  4)Planet Mo...

 So my newest side hustle endeavors pushed me towards something I really enjoy: Woodworking. My wife's grandfather clear cut an acre or two of his land and harvested a bunch of black walnut trees. When I was over there, I asked what he was going to do with the wood. He told me he would use some here and there but I was welcome to as much of it as I wanted. I used some of it to make Christmas presents over the holidays. One of my favorite gifts was a charcuterie board that I gave my mom. I did a quick google search and discovered that Black Walnut charcuterie boards were going for a whole lot more than I realized. I decided to make a few different ones and list them on Etsy. I have never used Etsy, but they make it quick and easy to set up a shop. They also are very clear about their fees and costs of selling. Here is a link to the fees that they charge for selling on the platform. https://www.etsy.com/legal/fees/ I also used to have some luck on eBay so I went ahead and posted them...

My wife and I moved into our first house in May and immediately started doing our own updates. Because we spent most of our savings buying the house, we wanted to keep the updates as affordable as possible. The kitchen was fairly builder-grade with the classic metal sink and all white appliances. Here is what it looked like before we started.  We took down all of the cabinet doors and painted them glossy white. We ordered some really affordable pulls from Amazon. They were $30 for 25 pulls!  We ordered some Feather Finish concrete and watched a ton of YouTube videos to learn how to concrete our countertops. While we were going, I made the call to go ahead and concrete our metal sink too. I hadn’t seen anyone do it but I thought it was worth a shot.  By the end of the project, we ended up only spending about $200 on pulls, concrete, polyurethane to seal the concrete, a $70 sink from Amazon, and a nifty new soap dispenser. Here our our final results!

My wife and I are in the process of purchasing our first rental property! Here is how we have done it step by step, and what we are going to do next! Step 1: Identifying our mark et The first thing we wanted to do was identify a market that we believe is emerging as opposed to emerged. We were looking at properties in our town and noticing they were priced higher and higher than we believed they were worth, then selling over asking price in a matter of days. Since we are going for a buy and hold investment strategy, we did not care for these high demand quick selling houses. Instead, we wanted to find a market that needed more rentals and had markets that typically foster tenants instead of homeowners. In a neighboring town, we found an area with a great downtown with shops and restaurants, an undergraduate university with a developing graduate program, a hospital, multiple large churches, and plenty of businesses.  Step 2: Secure Private Lending We reached out to family that has d...