Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! We’ve been back at home in Raleigh for a couple of weeks after spending most of August on two different cruises. We’ve had plenty of time to rest and recuperate before our next big adventure that commences in a few more days. Soon we cross the pond for another two week cruise around Europe. 

A bit of family news – after graduating college, our middle child accepted a full time job offer last month. She is scheduled to start next week. Another worker to keep the economy booming and another taxpayer to keep the government revenues flowing! 

On to our financial progress. August was an incredible month for our finances. Our net worth increased by $122,000 to end the month at $3,760,000. Our August income of $1,862 was almost enough to cover our spending of $2,452 for the month.

Let’s jump into the details from last month.

 

Income

Investment income totaled $648 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 smaller than normal amount of investment income paid in August. Here’s more on our dividend investments.

Blog income totaled $553 for last month. This represents fairly average blog income. 

My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $0 during last month. Things have definitely slowed down in my consulting business. Summer is over now, and the consulting biz is starting to pick back up. We’ll see how September ends up.

 

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Tradeline sales income totaled $350 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. 

My “deposit income” totaled $10. 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 $300 last month. These bonuses came from some Chase credit card spending bonuses.

 

 

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.

 

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Expenses

Now let’s take a look at August expenses:

 

 

In total, we spent $2,452 last month which is about $900 less than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Gifts and travel were the top two spending categories from last month.

 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

 

Gifts – $1,100:

Our daughter finished her bachelor’s degree and graduated college at the end of July. We had a small celebration at home where we gave her $1,000 as a graduation gift. A few days later we gave her another $100 for her 19th birthday. Then we took her on a cruise to the Caribbean! Not a bad summer for her at all! 

 

 

Travel – $568:

Almost all of our $568 in travel spending during August came from our European cruise around the United Kingdom and Ireland. The gratuities on the two week cruise totaled $476, and we spent $10-20 here and there on local transportation while in various ports across the British Isles. 

We also took a weeklong cruise to the Caribbean with two of our kids. Everything was prepaid on that cruise including the flights, hotel, and cruise fare and gratuities. The only thing we paid for was a few dollars for a couple of Ubers. I used my Chase credit cards’ rideshare credits to offset most of the Uber/Lyft charges. We sailed out of Tampa and the rideshare fares were incredibly low there. 

 

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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 $900 worth of Chase Ultimate Rewards points that can be redeemed instantly for $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 60,000 point sign up bonus right now). With the Sapphire Reserve card, I can get 1.5x the points value by booking cruises, flights, hotels, or rental cars through their travel portal. For example, I used 165,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points to pay for the $2,475 in taxes, fees, and gratuities on two of my cruises. Or I can transfer those Ultimate rewards points to over a dozen travel partners’ airline/hotel programs like United, Southwest, or Hyatt. 

Another excellent choice is the 120,000 point offer for the Chase Southwest Performance Business card. Those are enough points for half a dozen round trip flights in the USA if you shop carefully. This one card sign up bonus will generate enough points to qualify for the Companion Pass so that all of your Southwest flights are essentially buy one, get one free. 

 

 

 

 

Utilities – $425:

We spent $161 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month.

The electric bill was $244 for August. That’s mostly air conditioner usage. It was hot and humid last month. Fortunately the bills drop quite a bit by September. 

The natural gas bill for last month totaled $20. Most of that is the monthly connection charge. Just a few dollars for the actual gas consumed by the water heater.

 

Groceries – $236:

We were only in town about 12 days during August and didn’t go grocery shopping very much. As a result our total grocery spend was only $236 during the month. We ate pretty well on our cruises, however.

 

 

 

 

Cable/Satellite/Internet – $50:

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. I paid two months of internet bills during August.

 

Telephone – $44:

The annual renewal for our son’s mobile phone service came due in August. $44 for 12 months of 200 MB/month plus a few hundred talk minutes and texts. We use Redpocket for the cell service. He is on wifi while at school and doesn’t need a ton of data right now, so this plan works. 

 

Gas – $19:

A tank of gas for our Hyundai Accent.

 

Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $7:

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.

I prepaid an extra $24 for my dental insurance in July to cover two extra months so I didn’t pay anything for my plan in August. Mrs. Root of Good’s insurance premium didn’t post until September so we’ll have two months of payments next month. 

The $7 spent on medical expenses in August was a co-insurance bill for some routine lab work. 

 

Home Maintenance – $4:

$4 for just over a gallon of gas for our lawnmower.

 

Restaurants – $3:

I used the $5 Doordash credit from my Chase Sapphire Reserve card at Taco Bell and paid $3 extra to upgrade to a combo meal.

 

 

 

 

 

Spending for 2025 – Year to Date

 

 

We spent $26,583 during the first eight months of 2025. This annual spending is within $100 of our budgeted $26,667 for the first eight 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. 

And just like that, we are back on budget for the year! We weren’t really trying to cut spending and might end up spending more on things throughout the remaining four months of the year. Who knows! But we’re also busy traveling, researching, planning, and booking more travel. 

At this point, travel is mostly free from the millions of points and miles that I’ve accumulated over the years. Ironically, if we slow down on traveling we might actually spend more money while we are at home in the United States. 

Either way, we are doing very well financially. It doesn’t really matter if we are spending $40,000 per year or $100,000 per year since our portfolio is well over $3,000,000 now. 

 

Monthly Expense Summary for 2025:

 

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 – $26,583 (through 8/31/2025)

 

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Net Worth: $3,760,000 (+$122,000)

Our net worth increased by a whopping $122,000 during last month to end August at $3,760,000. 

We are are quickly approaching the $4 million milestone. We might hit the next milestone before the end of 2025 or it might take many more months or years if the market goes sideways. 

 

(That chart title should read “Root of Good Net Worth $3,760,000”; we’re firing the photoshop guy, don’t worry!)

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.

 

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Closing thoughts

Another great month of early retirement is in the books! I spent just under a decade working full time after college. And now I’ve been retired more than 12 years. The nine years I spent working felt WAY longer than the last 12 years of early retirement. “Time flies when you’re having fun” is certainly true!

When I started on my early retirement journey my oldest two kids were in 2nd and 3rd grade. Now they are both done with college and working full time. Pretty hard to believe. 

Since they are both working full time jobs, they are paying for most of their expenses. Clothes, cell service, healthcare and dental, tech toys and computers, restaurants, social activities, and gas for the car are all their responsibility. They are both still living at home, so we cover housing, utilities, and groceries. 

 

 

Eventually one of the kids will need to buy a new(er) car since we only have two cars to share between four drivers. The new(er) car will be their expense. Fortunately they can pay for it out of their new paychecks. 

Our oldest child already enrolled in the 401k at work and is maxing it out. She’s well on her way to early retirement in another decade or two. Our other kid will probably enroll and max out the 401k once she’s eligible to contribute to her 401k. 

Exciting times over here! Two out of our three kids are gainfully employed and us parents are keeping busy “working” a rigorous travel schedule. Speaking of travel, it’s time for me to go pack! 

See you next time!

 

Ready for fall to arrive? Did you have a good summer? Take any big trips?

 

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