Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! We’ve been at home for about a month since wrapping up our Panama Canal cruise in November. We intentionally blocked off Thanksgiving and Christmas from our travel calendar so we could be at home during the holidays. 

We will be at home for roughly two full months, with no more travel planned until the end of January when we depart on our next cruise adventure. Over the last month, I’ve been catching up on a lot of year-end tasks, checking things off my to-do list, and enjoying time just being at home. A vacation from vacations. 

We capped off November with a big Thanksgiving family gathering at our house. Lots of turkey, stuffing, gravy, and eggrolls for everyone! 

On to our financial progress. November was another great month for our finances. Our net worth increased by $64,000 to end the month at $3,914,000. Our November income of $2,534 was more than enough to cover our spending of $1,927 for the month.

Let’s jump into the details from last month.

 

Income

Investment income totaled $632 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. Here’s more on our dividend investments.

Blog income totaled $522 for last month. This represents an average month of blog income.

My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $420 during last month. That represents two hours of consulting. The consulting income remains steady for now, with a few hours booked each month. 

Tradeline sales income totaled $925 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 tradeline income is higher than 2024 so far. But the “worst case” outcome finally struck! I had a credit card closed due to “risk” according to the credit card issuer. I don’t know with certainty that my card was closed due to adding authorized users but it’s certainly possible. Five years of tradeline sales, and tens of thousands of dollars later, I would say the risk was more than offset by the gains. Another reminder that the tradeline sales game is not without risk. 

My “deposit income” totaled $34. Out of the total, $30 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. 

The other $4 of deposit income was a small class action lawsuit payout. 

 

 

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 November expenses:

 

 

In total, we spent $1,927 last month which is about $1,400 less than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Insurance and groceries were the top two spending categories from last month.

 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

 

Insurance – $936:

Our six-month auto insurance renewal just came due at the end of November. There are four drivers on the policy, two of which are inexperienced drivers with under three years of driving history. One of those inexperienced drivers will hit the “3 year of driving” mark in a few more months so we should see lower insurance bills in the future.

 

Groceries – $331:

We were home for a week and a half in November but didn’t do a ton of grocery shopping. We prepped for our big Thanksgiving meal by shopping for some staples before we went out of town for our Panama Canal cruise.

I think prices at the grocery store have mostly stabilized, and we’re even seeing some prices drop on staples like milk and eggs. However, other items are still really expensive. Anyone bought coffee and chocolate lately? 

 

 

 

Utilities – $248:

We spent $167 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month.

The electricity bill was $82 for last month. That represents a very low monthly electric bill for us. 

I didn’t pay the natural gas bill during November, because I paid it early in October before leaving for our Panama Canal cruise. We use natural gas for heating the house and for our water heater so the gas bill usually increases quite a bit during the winter months when it’s cooooold.

 

Travel – $237:

We spent a shockingly low $68 in total on our 18 day cruise vacation in November. Of that total, $46 was uber or lyft rides to/from the cruise port or around town in Panama City, Panama. We also rented a car in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. I paid for the $30 rental car with Chase Ultimate Reward points and spent $16 on gas driving around the mountains and coastal region of western Costa Rica. 

Another travel expense was $76 for seat reservations for our roundtrip flights to Spain in March. We paid $15-20 for each seat on the long transatlantic flights. We usually book the row of two seats in the very back of the plane so we have the whole row to ourselves. A very nice upgrade. We’ll take whatever seats they assign us for the shorter 1-2 hour connecting flights to get to/from our final destination. 

The remaining $95 of travel spending is the annual fee on the 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. 

 

Enjoying the Casco Viejo historic section of Panama City. 

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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. 

 

General Merchandise – $119:

I’m trying to split out all the miscellaneous purchases and keep them separate from my “grocery” spending. These are all the random things we buy at Amazon or Walmart that get lumped into groceries if I’m not very intentional about splitting receipts carefully. 

We spent $119 on various non-food items throughout the month. Included in that total are a few new upgrades for my new bike, such as a $30 exxtra wide bike seat kind of like this one. I bought the exact same kind of seat I had on my old bike several years ago. Problematically, they no longer manufactured the exact same seat so I had to buy a brand new one from ebay for $30. This is the business class bike seat. No way can I ever go back to riding in economy class! 

 

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. In 2026 our premiums will go up to about $142 per month. 

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 November. I didn’t pay my dental insurance bill during November but I did catch up on the bill payment in December. 

 

Puntarenas, Costa Rica port of call. This place was really amazing. First we visited the mountains then headed to the beach for the afternoon. 

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Electronics – $11:

Best Buy sent me a $10 off coupon, so I bought two $10 bluetooth mice to have on hand. Between the five of us in the house, we seem to go through a pretty large number of mice on an annual basis. Okay, maybe it’s just one or two replacements per year but it seems like that is often enough to have a spare mouse or two on hand. Just in case. 

 

Home Maintenance – $4:

A toilet tank flush valve seal replacement from Home Depot. Super easy to swap out just the seal and it did the trick to get the guest toilet flushing again. Of course the flush valve had to fail mere days before we invited 30 guests over to our house for Thanksgiving. Fortunately this one small part saved the day! 

 

Restaurants – $1:

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

 

Gas – $0:

No gas expense this month for us. Our kids pay for their own gas for driving to work. 

 

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Spending for 2025 – Year to Date

 

 

We spent $33,221 during the first eleven months of 2025. This annual spending is about $3,500 below our budgeted $36,667 for the first eleven 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. 

We will end up pretty close to our $40,000 budgeted spending once again in 2025. However it’s looking like we will end up a few thousand dollars over budget. We have had some massive spending during December already. I want to keep part of the spending a secret until next month (no spoilers, sorry!). The other big spending is our $3,000 annual property tax bill that is due in the next few weeks. I’ll probably go ahead and pay it during December which will push us over the top budget wise. 

All in all, I am very happy with where our spending is at for the year. I know I could spend a whole lot more but I’m also happy with my current lifestyle. 

 

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

 

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 – $33,221 (through 11/30/2025)

 

A quick port of call to Puerto Chiapas, Mexico. We didn’t leave the port complex but enjoyed the local music and dancers putting on a show for us right outside the ship.

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Net Worth: $3,914,000 (+$64,000)

Another big boost to our net worth last month! Our net worth shot up by another $64,000 to end the month of November at $3,914,000. We came very close to hitting the $4 million dollar mark last month but we didn’t quite get there. Maybe in another month or two? 

I’m just letting the portfolio do it’s thing. We go on cruises or other vacations for weeks at a time and I don’t even peek at the portfolio till I get back home and log in to do these monthly updates. Aren’t index funds great? Eventually we’ll have a big downturn. Next month or next year or next decade? Who knows! 

 

 

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

Retirement is a time to check things off your bucket list. The Panama Canal was definitely on my bucket list. We managed to visit the Canal on land a few years ago when we were docked at Colon, Panama. That was an awesome experience to see the gigantic cargo ships passing through the canal on their transit toward the Atlantic Ocean. 

Last month we got the full canal experience. While onboard the Emerald Princess, we enjoyed the 16 night journey from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Los Angeles. Along the way we stopped at several ports of call including Aruba, Panama City in Panama, Puntarenas in Costa Rica, and the ports of Puerto Chiapas, Huatulco, and Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. 

The highlight by far was the transit through the canal. That’s what we came for, after all. We got up early in the morning without a clearly defined game plan, not knowing exactly when we would get a chance to enter the canal. Around 7:30 am, we entered the channel leading to the first set of locks on the Atlantic side. We stood outside on the bow of the ship watching our grand entrance.

We ran around the ship quite a bit to catch the canal infrastructure from multiple vantage points. By lunchtime, we were in the middle of Panama traversing Lake Gatun.

The canal is actually two sets of locks about 30 miles apart. Lake Gatun and the Chagres River span the central section of Panama and connect the two sets of locks together. 

After passing through Lake Gatun and the Chagres River, we entered the narrow channel of the Culebra Cut. Upon reaching the end of that channel, we approached the Pacific set of locks that would lower us back down to sea level. 

 

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The whole experience fascinated me as a retired civil engineer that worked on transportation infrastructure projects for a decade. It was amazing to be there sailing through the midsection between North and South America. 

Would I do it again? Maybe.

Now that the novelty is gone, I don’t know that I would get a lot more out of another transit of the canal. There are a lot of other interesting places to visit in the world! Although it is a nice way to leisurely get from the east coast to the west coast of the USA (if you have 16 days to spare). I would recommend passing through the canal at least once if you are interested. The scale of the canal locks are massive! 

I always have a blast on these cruises. This ship had half a dozen bands performing throughout the day and night including a duo of Irish guys, one of which played the pipes. Endless food, endless sea views from our balcony, and half a dozen different ports of call to entertain us periodically throughout the voyage. 

I have a really good time on these cruises. I also have a really good time back on land once we’re home. And I know I’m very fortunate to be able to take all these vacations during early retirement! 

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

 

Who can believe Christmas is almost here and New Year’s isn’t much farther away?!

 

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