Every month since 2017, I have written an article that shows the growth of our passive income. Over the last couple of years, I\u2019ve added some of my annual goals (New Year\u2019s Resolutions).<\/p>\n
This is usually where I add some personal stuff. My wife was on work travel for two weeks, so my time was focused on being able to get the kids to camps, karate, etc. while managing the busiest month of dog boarding of the year.<\/p>\n
Goals for 2026<\/h2>\n
I put all my goals in a spreadsheet that I (Click it, and it will open in a new tab.)<\/p>\n Steal this idea and make it yours. I always make a bunch of goals that I know I\u2019ll never complete. It gives me the flexibility to fail on some things as long as I\u2019m making progress on others. Most people would do the opposite, focus on fewer goals, and aim to get them all done. It\u2019s much less overwhelming. I\u2019m weird.<\/p>\n I used to have three side hustles with a passive component: a dog-sitting business, this blog, and a website I manage for a non-profit. They all required some active work. However, I could do them all even while working a full-time job. I considered those partially passive income. This blog and the retainer for the non-profit website are minimal, so I consider it almost all dog boarding.<\/p>\n This section is the least passive of all incomes. I only count this as 50% passive (I\u2019ll adjust it for the 50% later).<\/p>\n Dog business in July was the best of the year. It was almost double the other top months. That\u2019s normal for the business, though. We typically don\u2019t travel, and Newport, RI is a huge seasonal tourist town. I had to turn away potential customers at times because we had too much business.<\/p>\n July\u2019s Dog\/Web Real Income: $5,217.96.<\/p>\n We have two rental properties. Both still have mortgages, and the rental income is around $1,100\/mo. One mortgage is due in 2027. The other one is a small loan, but it has another 15 years on it. If they were both mortgage-free, we\u2019d make around $32,000 a year.<\/p>\n For the purpose of this report, I calculate the rental property income using the following formula:<\/p>\n (Rents After Estimated Expenses) * (Equity Percentage Owned) = Income)<\/b><\/p>\n The idea is that we only own a percentage of the equity, so I only count that percentage of the rent after expenses. When we own everything, the equity percentage will be 100%, and it will be the entire rent after expenses.<\/p>\n Estimated expenses are insurance, property taxes, condo fees, and estimated condo maintenance<\/a>. Equity Percentage Owned (EPO) is our total equity divided by the property value on Zillow. (Zillow is very accurate for our condos.) When the mortgages are paid off, we\u2019ll have an EPO of 100% and be able to keep all the rent after estimated expenses.<\/p>\n In July, Zillow estimated our properties were worth nearly $6,000 less than the month before. However, we paid off $1,000 in mortgage principal. That meant our EPO went from owning 85.46% of our properties to 85.47%. Yay, 0.01% is the smallest gain ever. Weird stuff like that makes the journey interesting (yes, I\u2019m weird). The rents after expenses are $2,900\/month. Using the equation above, our estimated income from this area would be $2,519. That\u2019s the same as June, as it was a round-off error.<\/p>\n I feel like real estate prices are near their highs. It\u2019s no secret that there\u2019s an affordability problem with housing. Owning real estate can grow a ton when leverage helps multiply gains. However, since we own 85% of the properties, we aren\u2019t taking much advantage of leverage.<\/p>\n Managing rental properties requires some work \u2013 a few days a year. For this reason, I only count 80% of this number as passive income. One of our new tenants has had a lot of needs, but they are mostly legitimate. I\u2019m thinking of getting out of the rental property business. We\u2019re probably going to sell one property next spring.<\/p>\n My wife and I have been nearly maxing out our retirement accounts for a couple of decades. The markets have done very well over that time. Overall, we have a nice retirement nest egg.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t track dividends from all the accounts. I\u2019m doing well to get my wife to log in to her TSP (the government\u2019s version of a 401 (k)) account and give me the totals. I simply assume we could invest the money into an ETF that pays a 2.5% dividend. For example, HDV, a high-dividend ETF, currently yields 3.42%.<\/p>\n I also have profit-sharing income with a private company in which I own a small stake. I get a check each month that behaves like a dividend \u2013 it\u2019s just taxed a little differently.<\/p>\n July\u2019s estimated dividend income was $6,498. In June, it was $6401. The nearly $100 gain in the stock market makes me wonder why we even bother with real estate anymore. I have to tell myself that the stock market can be crazy, and it feels very overpriced right now. For a while, I had been putting more and more money into bonds and treasuries to try to protect these gains. Recently, I\u2019ve started to redeploy those into more risky assets that have the potential to gain more. I\u2019m only doing it in small amounts though. I like risk, and it feels like there are opportunities for some stocks to grow a lot. (More on this in my next article.)<\/p>\n Unlike the previous two sections, this income is 100% passive. For this reason, I don\u2019t have to adjust the numbers.<\/p>\n Dog\/Etc.: $5,054 \u2013 Adjusted to $2,527 Dogs\/Etc \u2013 Blue Line Total Adjusted Passive Income: $11,006.60<\/b><\/p>\n That\u2019s a great number and the top since\u2026 last July. In fact, that\u2019s the first time I\u2019ve cleared $10,000 this whole year.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a graph of the adjusted passive income since 2017, when I started keeping track:<\/p>\n The blue line represents the monthly total adjusted passive income. The red line represents the 12-month average. This removes some of the seasonality of dog boarding. I focus on the red line more.<\/p>\n In July, the number dropped a tiny bit. For one of the first times in the last 18 months, the red line didn\u2019t go up. While dog boarding and blogging have made less and less money, investments continue to grow. Those most passive components (real estate and dividends) totaled $8,479.60, a new record. This is almost $200 above last month\u2019s new record. For the year, that\u2019s a little more than $100,000 annual income.<\/p>\n My wife continues to work as well, though she\u2019s seriously considering retirement for the 34th time. I\u2019m encouraging her, but it hasn\u2019t worked. She has 27 years of high-level military service, which yields a vested pension that essentially doubles all this passive income. I also earn some income that falls outside of the areas listed above. It\u2019s not passive, so I don\u2019t mention it here.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t think of anywhere else to put this information, but our net worth gained 0.38% over the last month. For the whole year, our net worth is up 9.42%. It keeps going up, and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.<\/p>\n My income has been dropping over the last few years, going from $98K to 488K to $81K. Last year, I stayed mostly the same at $80,593.<\/p>\n Now that I\u2019m 50 and we\u2019ve got a good set of assets, I don\u2019t feel the need to push this. Income feels more for self-worth than anything else, I guess.<\/p>\n In July, I made 7,205.21. For the year, I\u2019m at $34,079. That pace would bring me to around $58.4K. I\u2019m going to fall short of my goal, but it\u2019s an improvement from last month.<\/p>\n In July, I started to work on getting some shirts made advertising my dog boarding. In addition, I\u2019m getting some notepads (for personalized thank you messages) and some stickers (to go with take-home bags as a tiny gift).<\/p>\n Unfortunately, it\u2019s been slow going, and we\u2019ve each dropped the ball a couple of times.<\/p>\n Last month, I noted that I was looking into getting my own desktop AI set up. I found and bought my AI Computer<\/a>. The first wrinkle was that it didn\u2019t come with a licensed Windows as it was supposed to. MSI (the company that makes it) says that the license is shipped in the BIOS, but I ran commands to show that, for some reason, they didn\u2019t put it in the BIOS on this one. It\u2019s probably because it was refurbished.<\/p>\n They fought me for days and days. They wanted me to send the machine back to them. It\u2019s 40 pounds and not easy to box back up \u2013 and who knows when I would get it back again. All they needed was to give me the 25-character license key that is tied to my serial number. I got frustrated with them and just looked into buying my own. Turns out that Stack Social sells a Windows 11 Pro<\/a> license for $10. With thousands and thousands of reviews and it being a company I heard of, I decided to take a chance. It worked perfectly.<\/p>\n My next project was to set it up so that I can use it from my laptop. My wife is often working in the office, and my hope was that I could just do the big projects in the background much of the time. I got Parsec set up on it<\/a>, and my laptop mirrors it with almost no lag. It was easy to set up, and I\u2019m quite impressed. Now, I can click an icon on my laptop, and it will wake up the office computer and log into it. This only works with the wifi I have at home, so there isn\u2019t a remote option. I can work on that later.<\/p>\n Long story, but I haven\u2019t gotten to doing any AI with it yet.<\/p>\n I got old and turned 50 several months ago. For my health goals, I\u2019m mostly using this separate article about health goals<\/a> from last year.<\/p>\n My goal this year is to add lean mass while losing fat mass. It took me a long time to figure out how to create a formula for that. I settled on the formula: lean mass minus 2\u00d7fat mass. This penalizes me if I add weight that\u2019s a bunch of fat.<\/p>\n My weight for July averaged 178.4 lbs. I still have 3 extra pounds from the Alaska cruise in June. My body fat averaged 24.5%, which was a small improvement. That means my lean mass was 134.7 and my fat mass was 43.7 lbs. This is a score of 47.3<\/b> using my formula. That\u2019s an improvement from the even 46 last month.<\/p>\n Higher is better, and this is the first time I\u2019ve gone in the right direction. I averaged 2025 at 55.9 and started the year at 52.6.<\/p>\n My goal of getting this number to 60 could be achieved by losing 169 lbs and having a body fat of 21.5%. I\u2019ve got a ways to go, and it\u2019s not looking great.<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t been tracking body and brain points the last couple of months. I still think it\u2019s a good idea, but I had to declare bankruptcy. I\u2019ve got too much other stuff going on.<\/p>\n (Also, I\u2019m feeling like my body is covered from the above. My brain is another topic. On one hand, I feel like AI is giving me a shortcut so I don\u2019t have to think as much. On the other hand, I\u2019m exploring and learning new things (often with AI) almost every day.)<\/p>\nstole<\/strike> borrowed from Retire By 40<\/a>. Here\u2019s what it looks like for this year:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lazymanandmoney.com\/images\/posts\/2026\/08\/lazy-man-goal-progress-202607-1024x410.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nPassive Income<\/h2>\n
![\"Passive](\"https:\/\/www.lazymanandmoney.com\/images\/posts\/2019\/06\/PassiveIncomePyramid-300x240.jpg\")
Dog Boarding\/Website Income<\/h3>\n
Rental Property Income<\/h3>\n
Dividend Income<\/h3>\n
Total Passive Income<\/h3>\n
Rentals: $2,476 \u2013 Adjusted to $1,982
Dividends: $6,498 \u2013 Remains at $6,498<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lazymanandmoney.com\/images\/posts\/2026\/08\/passive-income-streams-202607-1024x463.png\")
<\/p>\n
Rental \u2013 Red Line
Dividend \u2013 Yellow Line<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.lazymanandmoney.com\/images\/posts\/2026\/08\/passive-income-streams-12month-202607-1024x452.png\")
<\/p>\nBusiness and Other Money Goals<\/h2>\n
Personal Income ($80,000)<\/h3>\n
Improve My Dog Boarding Website and Operations<\/h3>\n
AI Everything<\/h3>\n
Health<\/h2>\n
Weight and Body Fat (Lean-(fat*2) mass >60)<\/h3>\n
Body and Brain Points (300 and 225 respectively)<\/h3>\n
Blood Pressure (Goal: 115\/75)<\/h3>\n