Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! We are back home in Raleigh after spending most of the month on a cruise through the Panama Canal. As a result this monthly update is almost a month late. Better late than never, I suppose. 

After being very busy traveling throughout 2025, we are finally home for a long period of time. So far, we have nothing planned for more than two months. The plan is to stick around Raleigh during Thanksgiving and Christmas to celebrate with our extended families. I’m also hoping to work on a few deferred maintenance projects around the house. Never fear, I also have a list of fun “deferred hobbies” that I have neglected for much of the past year.

Our older two kids are busy with their full time jobs while our son is almost half way through his last year of middle school. Since we are home for two months straight, we’ll have a lot more time to spend with the kids as well. 

On to our financial progress. October was another great month for our finances. Our net worth increased by $23,000 to end the month at $3,850,000. Our October income of $3,943 was way more than enough to cover our spending of $2,003 for the month.

Let’s jump into the details from last month.

 

Income

Investment income totaled $1,458 last month. Our equity index funds and ETFs pay dividends quarterly at the end of March, June, September, and December. As a result, we had a larger than normal amount of investment income paid in the early days of October as the payments flowed in. Here’s more on our dividend investments.

Blog income totaled $1,114 for last month. This represents above average blog income. A couple of affiliate advertising links paid off well last month but it’s mostly a one-time thing. 

My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $213 during last month. That represents one hour of consulting. After a very slow summer season of basically zero consulting income, it looks like I’m back to a low but consistent level of consulting income right now. 

Tradeline sales income totaled $700 during last month. I ramped up my tradeline sales a few years ago and discussed it in a bit more detail in my October 2020 monthly post and in my July 2021 monthly post. During 2024 I made over $6,000 in exchange for lending out my stellar credit history from half a dozen credit cards. 2025 is on the path to exceed the $6,000 mark. 

My “deposit income” totaled $11. This came from cash back and incentive bonuses from the Rakuten.com and Mrrebates.com online shopping portals (some of which was earned from you readers signing up through these links). 

If you sign up for Rakuten through this link and make a qualifying $30 purchase through Rakuten, you’ll get a $30 sign up bonus. 

My bank and credit card bonuses totaled $444 last month. This bonus money came from the Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back feature where I reimburse myself for grocery purchases paid for with my Sapphire Reserve card. 

 

 

If you’re interested in tracking your income and expenses like I do, then check out Empower Personal Dashboard, formerly known as Personal Capital (it’s free!). All of our savings and spending accounts (including checking, money market, and more than half a dozen credit cards) are all linked and updated in real time through Empower Personal Dashboard. We have accounts all over the place, and Empower Personal Dashboard makes it really easy to check on everything at one time.

Empower Personal Dashboard is also a solid tool for investment management. Keeping track of our entire investment portfolio takes two clicks. If you haven’t signed up for the free Empower Personal Dashboard service, check it out today (review here).

Tracking spending was one of the critical steps I took that allowed me to retire at 33. And it’s now easier than ever with Empower Personal Dashboard.

 

Pics from our visit to Tallinn, Estonia in October:

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Expenses

Now let’s take a look at October expenses:

 

 

In total, we spent $2,003 last month which is about $1,300 less than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Utilities and general merchandise were the top two spending categories from last month.

 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

 

Utilities – $513:

We spent $145 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month.

I paid two months of electric bills in October which totaled $310. The September bill included a lot of air conditioner usage. However, the October electric bill dropped quite a bit now that we are in the winter heating season. 

The natural gas bill for last month and this month totaled $58. I paid two bills in October since we were out of town for most of November. We’re in the winter heating season now, so we’ll be using a lot more natural gas going forward. 

 

General Merchandise – $477:

I usually let small random non-food “thing” purchases at Walmart or Amazon get lumped into the “grocery” category (out of laziness) but I broke out a few charges this month to the “general merchandise category.

The big news is that I bought a new bike! My old bike was stolen a couple of years ago. I bought a different “new” bike about a year ago, then decided I didn’t like it so I sold it for a profit. I’ve been busy traveling the last year and haven’t found much time to devote to bike shopping. During October I finally made time to buy a bike. I’ve taken a test ride, tweaked a few things, and started buying some accessories to kit up the bike like I want it. At $427 my new bike wasn’t super cheap but also not a budget-buster. I think there is about $100 worth of inflation and/or tariffs built into it (the same bike was $100 cheaper throughout 2024).

In other “general merchandise” purchases, Mrs. Root of Good bought some colorful metallic windmills for the yard from Amazon for $50 total for three of them.

 

Pics from our visit to Helsinki, Finland:

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Groceries – $467:

We were in town for most of October but didn’t spend that much on groceries. I’m also getting a decent amount of groceries for free or very cheap from the dozen or so Doordash and Instacart credits that come with the handful of Chase credit cards that offer those monthly benefits. 

 

Travel – $343:

Travel spending during October was all over the place. At the beginning of the month, we were in Europe finishing up our two week Baltic Capitals cruise. We spent about $60 on various transit and train tickets to get around the ports we visited and to get from the Rotterdam cruise port back to the Amsterdam Schipol Airport. 

Other travel spending included $200 for the taxes on two British Airways flights home from London for next year. We booked the tickets with British Airways Avios points and received a lower than normal rate on the taxes of $100 per ticket. 

The remaining $83 of travel spending covered the gas in our minivan for a short two day road trip to the mountains of Virginia. With the kids’ school and work schedules, we could only get away for two full days so we made the most of it. We packed some food from home and grazed plentifully on the free breakfast buffet at the hotel, so our food cost ended up being zero.

I paid for one night in the Hyatt hotel in Roanoke, Virginia with 6,500 Hyatt points (funded by 6,500 Ultimate Rewards points transferred from my Chase Sapphire Reserve card). 

 

Blue Ridge Mountains vacation along the Virginia section of the Blue Ridge Parkway:

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Get free travel like us

If you are interested in getting free travel from your credit card like I do, consider the Chase Ink business cards (my referral link). Right now, the Chase Ink cards offers an above average $750-900 worth of Chase Ultimate Rewards points that can be redeemed instantly for $750-900 in cash (or even more for travel!). 

Chase is pretty liberal when it comes to “what is a business”. If you sell stuff on eBay or Craigslist or do some odd jobs occasionally then you have a business and could get a credit card as a “sole proprietor”. 

I use the 90,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points by transferring them to my Chase Sapphire Reserve card (also offering a 125,000 point sign up bonus right now). I can transfer those Ultimate rewards points to over a dozen travel partners’ airline/hotel programs like United, Southwest, or Hyatt. For example, I transferred 6,500 Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt and used them to book a $300/night room that sleeps five during the peak season in the Virginia mountains. 

Another excellent choice is the 85,000 point offer for one of the Chase Southwest Personal cards. Those are enough points for four round trip flights in the USA if you shop carefully. 

 

Clothing/Shoes – $54:

A pre-cruise visit to the thrift shop for some new clothes. We bought about 15-20 items and the total was $54. They had a 25% off everything sale and also gave us a $5 off coupon as we walked in the door. They clearly knew I was coming and cranked the discounts up as a result! 

I am pretty sure several of the articles of clothing I bought were brand new although none of them had the tags still attached. 

 

Telephone – $44:

We renewed Mrs. Root of Good’s cell phone plan through Redpocket. The one year plan is $44 for a monthly allotment of 200 MB data, a few hundred minutes of talk time, and a few hundred texts.

Lately, we’ve been using Gigsky free 1 GB or 3 GB eSim chips that are a Visa cardholder perk for our international cell data needs while traveling. 

 

Gas – $39:

A tank of gas for our minivan for driving around town. I included the $83 worth of road trip gas under the “travel” category of spending. 

 

Restaurants – $26:

Mrs. Root of Good went out to lunch with her friends for $16. 

I spent another $10 plus two $5 credits from my Chase Sapphire Reserve cards at Taco Bell. To sweeten the deal I added a 50% off coupon to the order. I believe we ended up with something like $40 worth of Taco Bell that night for $10 out of pocket. 

 

Cable/Satellite/Internet – $25:

We pay $25 per month for a local reduced rate package due to having a lower income and having kids. 50 mbit/s download, 10 mbit/s upload. 

 

Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $19:

Our 2025 health insurance is free thanks to very generous Affordable Care Act subsidies that we receive due to our low ~$51,000 per year Adjusted Gross Income. 

Our 2025 dental insurance plan normally costs $32 in premiums per month. We picked a plan from Truassure through the healthcare.gov exchange. The dental insurance does a good job of covering most of our routine cleanings, exams, and x-rays plus most of the cost of basic procedures like fillings.

Mrs. Root of Good’s dental insurance was $19 total for one month. I stopped paying my dental insurance because I thought it was already paid through the end of October but apparently the dental insurance company disagreed with me and cancelled my coverage. We’ll see who wins this battle in the coming months. Wouldn’t it be nice if things just worked like they were supposed to?

 

Pics from our visit to Warnemunde and Rostock, Germany:

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Spending for 2025 – Year to Date

 

 

We spent $31,295 during the first ten months of 2025. This annual spending is about $2,000 below our budgeted $33,333 for the first ten months of the year per our $40,000 annual early retirement budget. I haven’t increased our annual budget for inflation in a decade, so at some point I need to revisit the budget numbers. 

As the year draws to a close I think we will end the year very close to our $40,000 budget. I still have to pay our roughly $3,000 annual property tax bill so that will add quite a bit to our annual spending. However we only have about five weeks of 2025 remaining so we probably won’t spend a ton more this year unless some unexpected expense pops up last minute. 

 

Monthly Expense Summary for 2025:

• January – $5,091
• February – $2,462
• March – $2,136
• April – $4,261
• May – $4,097 (average of May and June)
• June – $4,097 (average of May and June)
• July – $1,992
• August – $2,452
• September – $2,694
• October – $2,003

 

Summary of annual spending from more than a decade of my early retirement:

• 2014 – $34,352
• 2015 – $23,802
• 2016 – $38,991
• 2017 – $31,708
• 2018 – $29,058
• 2019 – $25,630
• 2020 – $28,466
• 2021 – $31,740
• 2022 – $29,449
• 2023 – $37,865
• 2024 – $40,286
• 2025 – $31,295 (through 10/31/2025)

 

Pics from our visit to Kiel, Germany:

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Net Worth: $3,850,000 (+$23,000)

Our net worth shot up by another $23,000 to end the month of October at $3,850,000. We continue to approach the $4 million mark but we aren’t there yet. 

Since I’m traveling half the time, I don’t really pay attention to my accounts on a routine basis. These monthly updates are typically when I tune in to my finances and see how I’m doing. As long as my credit cards work and the bills get paid on time, I suppose it doesn’t make much difference if I have $1 million or $4 million. Other than the psychological peace of mind of knowing I have way way way more than I ever need instead of just barely enough if everything goes right. 

 

 

For the curious, our net worth reported above includes our home value (which is fully paid off). I value the house at $300,000, which is probably what we would net after sales expenses. However, please note that I don’t consider my home value as part of my portfolio for “4% rule” calculation purposes. I realize folks ask me about that every month so I just wanted to state that here for clarity.

 

Closing thoughts

It’s hard to believe we are just over a month away from wrapping up 2025! This year has been a great year for us personally, financially, and as a family. We are very fortunate and have a lot to be thankful for during the upcoming holiday season. 

Right now we are gearing up to host both of our extended families for Thanksgiving at our house in the coming days. Mrs. Root of Good’s side of the family is coming over on Thanksgiving day and my side of the family is coming over during the weekend. We intentionally took a break from travel so that we would be home during Thanksgiving and Christmas so we can spend time with family.

During our downtime in December and January, we’ll finish up the planning for a half dozen trips during 2026 and possibly book a few more adventures for 2026 and 2027 as well. 

I always look forward to this time of year when it’s cool enough to have campfires. I just invited over a few friends that I haven’t seen in person in a while and it was great to catch up with them. I always have a blast and I think my guests do, too. 

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving to those in the United States, and I’ll see you next month!

 

Turkey or something else? What’s the best Thanksgiving food?

 

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