Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! Happy belated New Years to all of you! We had a great 2025 and we’re looking forward to another great year in 2026. During December, we stayed at home the whole month to spend time with family over the holidays. 

After a family-filled Thanksgiving at our house in November, we enjoyed having someone else in the family host our family gathering for Christmas. And we got together again on New Year’s Day for more holiday festivities. 

Our adult children enjoyed having time off from work for the holidays even though they are trying to conserve their vacation time. The reality of the workforce is hitting them hard! Our son, still in middle school, enjoyed the two week holiday break too. Lots of fun family time together all around. 

I’m still enjoying the laid back early retired lifestyle. It’s nice to be at home for an extended period after a couple of years of being on the road on a monthly basis for various trips around the world. 

On to our financial progress. December was another great month for our finances. Our net worth increased by $44,000 to end the month at $3,958,000. Our December income of $40,619 was way more than enough to cover our spending of $10,792 for the month.

If you’re thinking over $10,000 is a lot of spending, then you are right! Keep on reading to find out how we spent so much last month. 

 

Income

Investment income totaled $39,022 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. In particular, December is always higher than other months because many ETF’s pay most or all of their annual distributions at year end. Here’s more on our dividend investments. Full disclosure: about 75% of the investment income was paid inside retirement accounts. We actually don’t need any more cash right now so I reinvest the income within the IRAs. 

Blog income totaled $569 for last month. This represents an average month of blog income.

My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $815 during last month. That represents four hours of consulting. The consulting income remains steady for now, with a few hours booked each month. 

Tradeline sales income totaled $200 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 2025 I made over $6,000 in total in exchange for lending out my stellar credit history from half a dozen credit cards.

My “deposit income” totaled $13. This amount 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. 

 

 

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.

 

Expenses

Now let’s take a look at December expenses:

 

 

In total, we spent $10,792 last month which is about $7,000 more than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Gifts and taxes were the top two spending categories from last month.

 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

 

Gifts – $5,560:

The big news for our household was the purchase of a new (used) car. Our oldest daughter bought a lightly used 2019 Honda Fit last month for right around $15,000 total. We gave her $5,000 to help out with her first car purchase. She had saved up $10,000 cash from her new job, so she doesn’t have a car loan. 

I really like the car a lot. It’s almost like a miniature minivan. 

 

 

The remaining $560 in gifts covered Christmas gifts for our kids and extended family.

Since our adult kids have jobs this year, they bought a lot of Christmas gifts themselves this year. These gift-giving expenses are theirs and are not included on my spending report. 

 

Taxes – $2,981:

Our annual property tax came due in December which totaled $2,981. I used a credit card to pay the property tax bill and incurred a $69 processing fee to do so. That fee is reflected in the “travel” spending category since I spend everything I can on credit cards in order to maximize travel rewards earned throughout the year. 

 

Groceries – $999:

We finally had a long period of time at home, and we did quite a bit of grocery shopping during December. Some of this grocery spending went toward replacing pantry items that we use up over the course of several months such as a 50 pound sack of imported jasmine rice and a 36-count case of butter chicken curry paste. 

 

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Utilities – $344:

We spent $146 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month.

The electricity bill was $108 for last month.

Our natural gas bill for last month was $91. This month’s bill will be substantially higher. 

 

 

General Merchandise – $302:

Stuff for around the house. Gardening supplies. Christmas decorations. Also some deferred purchases where we just didn’t have time to research and buy things during the last year when we were traveling a ton. 

 

Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $181:

Our 2026 health insurance is $143 per month thanks to very generous Affordable Care Act subsidies.  The Covid-era enhanced ACA subsidies expired in 2025 so we aren’t paying $0 per month any longer. 

Our 2026 dental insurance plan premiums are $38 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.

 

Travel – $164:

I used a credit card to pay our annual property tax bill and incurred a $69 processing fee to do so. That fee is reflected in the “travel” spending category since I spend everything I can on credit cards in order to maximize travel rewards earned throughout the year.

The remaining $95 of travel spending is the annual fee on my Barclay Wyndham Business card. In exchange for the annual fee, we get 15,000 Wyndham points which we usually redeem before a cruise for a free hotel night that would cost $200-300 per night if we paid cash. 

 

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 offer an above average $750-1000 worth of Chase Ultimate Rewards points that can be redeemed instantly for $750-1000 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 from my recent offer 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. 

 

Entertainment – $114:

We attended the Chinese Lantern Festival in Cary, North Carolina right before Christmas. The total cost for 5 tickets for the family was $114. Pretty impressive exhibit with a lot of unique “lanterns” throughout the park grounds where the event was held. 

 

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Automotive – $65:

I bought nine windshield wipers from Rock Auto to replace the blades on our 3 cars. They charge $10 per order for shipping so I usually order several things at one time to economize on shipping costs. 

 

Gas – $28:

One tank of gas for our car. The girls buy their own gas when they are driving to work. As a result we do not spend that much on gas each month since we don’t drive a lot. 

 

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. 

 

Restaurants – $23:

I spent three dollars to add onto some Taco Bell orders to use up my two $5 Doordash credits from my Chase Sapphire Reserve cards.

The remaining $20 in “restaurant” spending covered donuts at Krispy Kreme in downtown Raleigh. After our daughter’s graduation ceremony last month, we stopped by the donut shop on the way home to celebrate with her. She actually graduated in July but had to wait till the fall graduation ceremony to walk across the stage. 

 

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Home Maintenance – $10:

Our clothes washer started making a strange noise and then it quit agitating the clothes and wouldn’t spin at all. When I advanced the cycle manually, the washer would drain fully so I knew the motor and pump were still fully operational. 

I quickly figured out the issue was a failed motor coupler that I replaced sixteen (!!) years ago. Since I knew the repair was pretty straightforward, I bought a $10 replacement heavy duty motor coupler online and had it shipped to our house in a few days. The repair was straight forward once we got the old broken coupler removed from the motor which was quite a chore! Patience, perseverance, and lots of WD-40 won the day. 

The washing machine runs like new now. Hopefully we get another 16 years out of this new motor coupler.

 

 

Spending for 2025 – Year to Date

 

 

We spent $44,013 during the full year of 2025. This annual spending is about $4,000 above our budgeted $40,000 spending per our $40,000 annual early retirement budget. I haven’t increased our annual budget for inflation in a decade. 

If we didn’t make the big $5,000 gift to our daughter to cover a third of her car purchase, then we would have been just under budget. We did explicitly plan on helping our kids out some when they are getting established in the adult world. And we can easily afford this $5,000 gift given our financial position today. 

All in all, our annual spending looks very good. No real surprises in any specific areas during 2025. No real “emergencies”. No ugly surprises. All of which is good news! 

We managed to do a lot of living without spending much money. Having a paid off home certainly helps with that. We still DIY a lot of stuff but also outsource many things like auto maintenance and repair. 

What does 2026 hold? Who knows?!?! Probably more of the same. Almost all of our 2026 travel is already paid for. The remainder will likely be paid for with our existing stash of travel points and miles. I don’t think we’ll need to buy another new car in 2026. Let’s hope it’s another boring year without any emergencies, spending-wise. 

 

 

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
• November – $1,927
• December – $10,792

 

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 – $44,013 (full year of 2025)

 

Net Worth: $3,958,000 (+$44,000)

Another big bump to our net worth. We ended the year at $3,958,000, which was a $44,000 increase from a month earlier. We didn’t hit the magical $4 million milestone during the month of December but we did finally blow past that number in the first few days of 2026. 

The best part is I didn’t even realize it had happened for a few days because I normally only log in about once a month to complete these blog post updates. It’s cool that we hit the $4 million number but it won’t change a whole lot in day to day life. Just boosts the margin of safety for our early retirement plans. And it means we can afford to spend even more money in the future should we ever want to. 

When we zoom out and look at year over year net worth changes, it’s a shockingly large number for 2025. We saw our net worth increase by $725,000 during the year. That one year increase is more than half of our entire net worth at the time of my retirement back in 2013! 

 

 

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

2025 was a great year for us. We spent about 4 months on the water on various cruises all over the world: Mexico, Caribbean, Alaska, and six weeks around northern Europe. Our 2026 travel plans aren’t quite as ambitious but we do have half a dozen big trips planned throughout the year. 

During these short winter days at home in Raleigh, we have been planning and prepping for our upcoming trips to warmer, sunnier destinations. Next up for us is a cruise to Hawaii in a couple of weeks. After that, we head to Europe in March for a two week cruise around the Mediterranean. 

Throughout 2026, we have about a month in between each cruise or vacation. That’s an intentionally slower pace compared to our busy 2025 travel schedule. 

I’m looking forward to our 2026 trips. We’re visiting Hawaii for the first time ever. If things go as planned, we’ll also visit about 8 or 10 new countries on various trips during the rest of 2026. 

That’s it for me this month, folks. Thanks for tuning in to the latest monthly update. I’ll see you next month!

 

Any New Year’s Resolutions you want to share? 

 

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