Another Nice Month In New England And Canada

Summer is great in New England. We have been living here for just over 2 years now and still finding all kinds of cool things to explore. Most of this has revolved around hiking since it is a common hobby I share with Mrs. Max OOP. Her brother-in-law initially got us interested in it several years back when we were still down south.

We kicked off August 1st with a nice local mountain hike right around the corner from our house. When we got to the top of this mountain we were pleasantly surprised by a busting crop of blueberries. We took a small harvest home for ourselves. When you can combine healthy hiking with healthy eating, it is usually a win-win and may even help our future out-of-pocket healthcare costs.

A few days later on the weekend, we decided to tackle 2 of the 48 four thousand-foot mountains in New Hampshire; Mount Pierce and Mount Eisenhower. These hikes were pretty amazing and Mrs. Max OOP’s first time tackling a 4,000-foot NH mountain.

The next weekend, Mrs. Max OOP’s sister’s family came through town for a few days. They then grabbed Mrs. Max OOP to head up to Canada for the week. Since she is a teacher, she took the whole week off while I was sweating blood at the office counting healthcare beans. I was able to leave early on Thursday and take Friday off to get a nice long weekend in New Brunswick. This was our second trip up to NB this summer. We didn’t go back to Hopewell Rocks but I did manage to get a hike in at Fundy National Park with my brother-in-law. So at least I got to see the highest tides in the world again. Mrs. Max OOP and I drove back down to New England on the 18th together and listened to the Slow Burn podcast along the way. Great coverage of the Clinton and Nixon impeachment if you like that sort of thing.

To close out August, we decided to take one more local trip back to Saratoga Springs, New York. Mrs. Max OOP’s sister’s family is settling in nicely into their new house and we like visiting with them. We used to live in the same neighborhood down south and got to see them all the time, but now they are 5 hours away. These trips will be harder for us to do with the school year starting soon so we decided on one last trip for the summer. We are already planning on spending Christmas with them this year since they have come to our place for the last two years and it is their first year in their new house.

We Climbed Mt. Washington

How could I forget the best part of August? We climbed Mount Washington! After all this hiking lately, we felt like we were finally in good enough shape to tackle Mount Washington for the first time – without a car. This is the highest mountain in New England and quite the sight. We went up Tuckerman Ravine to the summit and back down Lion Head trail. This hike was only eight miles, but the elevation is pretty wild. The only disappointing part of this hike is once you summit, there are carloads of tourists already up there who took the Auto Road to the top. We had to wait in line behind tourists to take this photo of the summit. One of the highlights of the hike is a nice lunch at the top. I got chili since it was really cold up there. This hike does take some preparation and general knowledge of the White Mountains and the severe weather that comes with it. Make sure to plan accordingly; people have died up there.

Healthcare

Max somehow managed to get stung three times last weekend. Thankfully, it didn’t amount to any out-of-pocket costs since I didn’t need to go to the clinic or ER, but that sure would have been frustrating.

Other than that, another solid healthcare month for the Max Out of Pocket crew. Neither of us had any out-of-pocket costs for healthcare. My $39/month gym closed on the 30th and my exercise partner from work and I will check out our options for September. It is looking like it will cost a little more than the $39/month I have been paying, but time will tell. Luckily, I have healthy benefits to help offset some of that cost. I did lose a little ground in August with the week off in New Brunswick, but it was also probably good to give my body a break from the heavy lifting. 

I went ahead and scheduled my annual preventive physical exam for October, but I expect the exam will be free without any out-of-pocket costs to me. I am also hoping to get a free cholesterol test out of the deal. We will cover all of this in detail in the coming months. It was a 78-day wait for the appointment, so if you are trying to get in your preventive exam before the end of the year, I would put in for it now. Mine will be October 30, 2019. 

Finance

I will be slowing down coverage of the healthcare REIT experiment a bit here on the blog. Mostly because I can’t keep up with it with a full-time career on the side. That doesn’t mean I am not re-visiting the experiment every pay-day. Although we love passive income here at Max Out of Pocket, we don’t want to accidentally place this blog into a “REIT” niche. As for frequency, I am not sure, maybe one post a month? An early goal of mine was to have a dedicated healthcare portfolio that would spit off enough passive income to cover my max out-of-pocket healthcare cost in any given year. That would be over $6,000 per year so we would have a long way to go to get there.

I have been dollar-cost averaging my way into this investment every two weeks since early April with more than ten purchases this year, and I will likely continue that through the end of 2019. I will then probably start one last round of front-loading my 403(b) into the total stock market starting early 2020. At that point, the medical office building portfolio may just go into maintenance mode while I focus on other things. At least I will still get to collect the dividends.

We did manage to cover in detail where I keep all of these medical office buildings. I have historically held them in tax-advantaged accounts like the Roth or Traditional IRA to make my tax life easier. That was until August 2nd when I purchased 100 shares of DOC with my brokerage account. I am always willing to complicate my life a bit in the name of the Max Out of Pocket blog. I am hoping to buy enough shares to generate about $100 in dividends so we can follow them through my 2019 tax return come 2020. I purchased 90 shares on 8/16/2019 and 75 shares on 8/30/2019 with both transactions occurring in my brokerage account.

My medical office building portfolio consisting of DOC has eclipsed $30,000 at this point and will yield about $1,600 in dividends over the next year. Owning one stock at $30k isn’t ideal and I keep saying I plan on tightening this investment up, and one of these days I will get that!

As for the rest of the Max Out of Pocket portfolio (mostly index funds), our monthly overall net worth increased 0.64% in August, but it was a pretty wild ride in the stock market.

Blog

I was happy to get in three new healthcare articles this month. As I write these, I definitely feel the struggle and frustration patients would feel trying to make their way through this system. I find it difficult to put finishing touches on some of the posts, mostly because all things healthcare have so many moving parts. I am finding I can rarely say “always” when talking about healthcare. It is usually words like “generally” or “most of the time” or “grandfathered plans”. Hopefully, as things progress, we will have the tools we need to at least push back on the system where we can.

Did you have a healthy August?

Max

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New Brunswick

Max OOP is a huge fan of the Maritimes. Nova Scotia gets all the notoriety, but the province of New Brunswick has proven to be a very interesting place. My mother-in-law calls it the “drive through” province. In my years of amateur traveling, I would interpret her comment as a sign it’s probably a good place to go. Move along tourist. Move along.

Now, I will be the first to admit that 10 years ago I probably couldn’t even point New Brunswick out on a map. I might not have even known it was located in Canada. Max OOP didn’t do well in geography, but traveling has helped a little with that. We also bought ‘map placemats’ for the dinner table so I can study up on African countries while I wolf down spaghetti meat bake or cinnamon toast crunch. If I knew how to create affiliate links, I would link to the placemats here so you could get some yourself and stare at New Brunswick while you eat.

Shortly after I met Mrs. Max OOP (a Canadian, native to Ontario), I found out that her parents actually retired to New Brunswick. So once I figured out that New Brunswick wasn’t one of the Scandianvian countries across the pond but it was actually located in Canada, a trip seemed in the cards. I made my first trip up there to meet the family back in 2010 and I have been back several times since then. My sister-in-law even got married there.

Now that we are located in New England, it is a much easier place to visit. We can easily get to New Brunswick in 6-7 hours compared to the 20+ hour drive it would have taken when we lived down south. A short four day weekend visit to this place can feel like a week long vacation away from the hustle and bustle of the United States. Unfortunately, our phones started working up there a few years back, so now we need to turn those off to completely unplug and recharge like I do at work conferences.

A Weekend ‘Sabbatical’

Well, we made last weekend a four day weekend and we took full advantage of it. Mrs. Max OOP finished teaching for the year and started summer vacation that Friday. I took that as an excuse to blow out of work a few hours early so we could make the 6.5 hour nonstop drive up to New Brunswick and get in Friday night. We did need to make one important stop along the way though. We hit up the duty free shop to get some Jameson and Jose Quervo to pump a little extra fun into the weekend. Liquor is expensive in Canada, so I highly recommend making the stop, assuming you are going to be there for more than 24 hours. Here at Max Out of Pocket, we try and save money in all aspects of our lives.

This trip to see my mother-in-law in New Brunswick was planned in advance. Mr. Max OOP has gotten in a bad habit over the years of never solidifying plans until the last minute. We planned this one out about a month ahead of time and stuck to it. The focal point of this trip was going to be Hopewell Rocks Provincial Park. In all the times I have been up to New Brunwsick, I somehow never made it to Hopewell.

So after a day or two lounging around the homestead pretending I was on a sabbatical detoxing from my corporate cube, I was ready to make the 2 hour drive over to the Bay of Fundy and visit Hopewell Rocks. What a pleasant surprise it was.

Highest Tides In The World

I am not asking you if they are the highest tides in the world, I’m telling you they are the highest tides in the world.

– Paraphrasing the most interesting man in the world

When I say highest tides in the world, I mean it. I am talking about 160 billion tons of seawater rushing into a bay and raising the water level by over 50 feet in some areas. We are talking five-story buildings here and it only takes about 6 hours for the tide to come in. It has the strength to change the direction of a river. There is even a place in the Saint John River called “the reversing falls”, a name that clearly illustrates the power I am trying to describe here.

So the next time you finish a 12 hour workday that some people hold up as a badge of honor, take a second to visualize these tides and how small you really are.

Hopewell Rocks

What’s cool about Hopewell Rocks is the tidal erosion has created some pretty cool rock formations. Remember how the tide cycle is about 6 hours? That makes it possible to not only hike around these formations, but also kayak around them. All in the same day! Max OOP considers the kayak part a bit of a touristy money trap and we try to avoid these kinds of things. We save the money and buy medical office buildings instead.

So after a nice two hour drive through New Brunswick, Mrs. Max OOP, her mom, and myself arrived at Hopewell Rocks. This isn’t a place you just show up to. The tides advance 50 minutes every day, so you need to plan your trip so the tide’s path fits what you are trying to do. Max OOP would probably pay good money to see park management strongly shut down someone’s request for a refund because their kid missed out on kayaking that day due to poor planning. This is how the script would go. “Sorry ma’am, but this isn’t Disney. It’s not like a ride broke down. Mother Nature doesn’t revolve around you, and your kid is crying because you are a poor planner. I can’t give you a refund for this because it would re-enforce this behavior. Also, your kid probably shouldn’t be crying over this. Just an observation. The park is closing and you need to leave now.”

The Max Out of Pocket crew wanted to hike in and around the rocks, so we needed to plan and make sure the tide was partially out to give us time to hike. I believe we arrived at about 1pm. Leave it to the Canadians though; the park fees were being waived that day for any donation to the local food bank. My mother-in-law dropped in a Canadian $20 bill, the rubber admit stamp hit our hands, and we were on our way! I realized later that it was $10 per adult, so not only did we do a good deed and feed some hungry people, but the Max Out of Pocket crew saved $10 on our admittance fee.

Once we got through the entrance, it was about a 15 minute hike down to the coastline. There is on-site transportation to the coastline if you can’t walk the 15 minutes. But then again, if you can’t make this short walk, this might not be the park for you. Unless you have a legitimate disability, Max OOP discourages lazy behavior like this. The 15 minute walk is part of the experience, and may even help cut down on your future healthcare costs if you take a few short walks from time to time. In total, we spent about 2 hours walking around the coast for a total distance of about 3.2 miles according to my ‘map my run’ app. We saw some pretty amazing formations and also got to experience the tide coming in. I will let some pictures do the talking.

We closed out the trip with a nice picnic we brought from home that included tuna sandwiches, Pringles, cream soda, and Tim Tam chocolate bars. We live a good live. This decision and light planning probably saved us over $25 in concession fees.

Final Thoughts

You don’t always have to take a flight to the far corners of the earth to find an amazing place so you can go on to declare yourself a world traveler on social media. A little effort exploring your own region can produce extraordinary results. I saw the highest tides in the world and only had to drive seven or eight hours. Sometimes, you can find great things in your own little region of the world. Max OOP really liked Hopewell Rocks, and I will definitely be going back sometime in the future.

Max Out of Pocket for admission to Hopewell Rocket = $10 CAD per adult, $7.25 CAD for kids (as long as they promise not to cry when they miss kayaking).

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