Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! We are at home in Raleigh for a two month stretch right now. I forgot how nice it is to relax at home!
During August, we spent a week in northern California visiting the Redwoods National Park and state parks. The last few days of the trip we spent driving south along the Pacific Coast Highway and enjoyed other scenic drives in the area.
In other breaking news, our son, the youngest member of the family, just started high school! He’s already a few weeks into school at this point and adjusting well to the new school and new expectations.
Let’s jump into the recap of last month or two!
Financial Update
On the income side, August was a slow month for dividends but we should start getting a lot more investment income toward the end of September. Our index funds typically pay quarterly dividends so March, June, September, and December are the biggest months for investment income.
On the spending side, August was a fairly low spending month overall. Our trip was mostly paid for using points and miles other than the ~$200 in gas for the 1,000+ mile drive through California. We also ate a lot of free Wendy’s, Little Caesars, and Domino’s using the $10 Paze promotion credits.
On the net worth side, we are still comfortably above $4 million in mid-September. We have seen a small decline in net worth the last several weeks due to softness in the stock market.
Monthly Recap
We’ve been busy at home the past month or so. Our two adult children each had a “party” with their friends at our house during two weekends in August. We got to meet 12-15 of their friends and coworkers and put faces to the friends that we’ve heard about for almost a year now.
Since we travel so much, we miss out on some social events back in Raleigh. It’s good to have time to catch up on things in between our various trips.
In other family news, our son started his freshman year of high school in late August. He’s doing well so far and seems to enjoy it as much as one can enjoy school (ha ha!). It’s the same high school where Mrs. Root of Good, his older sisters, and I all attended. We just started talking about college and career options and might do a very early college visit when he has a break from school.
Northern California Road Trip to Redwoods and Pacific Coast Highway
Our big trip last month took us to the west coast of the USA. We flew into San Jose, California, where we picked up a rental car. Heading north, we mostly skipped San Francisco other than visiting the Golden Gate Bridge on the way out of town.
We spent the next several days visiting several redwood state parks and the Redwoods National Park. We stopped for a night or two at a time during the road trip but kept up a very brisk pace overall.
This wasn’t intended to be a relaxing vacation. The goal was to cover a lot of ground and see the various redwoods sights as comprehensively as possible in under a week. Mission accomplished!
I guess this is how the typical American family vacation usually works when you’re working full time and only have a week or two off during the year. Maximizing sightseeing is crucial. We still took twice as long as most folks spend in the Redwoods area but it felt like we barely scratched the surface. Oh well, I suppose there is always a next time.
After leaving the redwoods, we took a long detour along the Mattole Road Scenic Drive. More amazing scenery. We also experienced the impressive temperature variations. It was 57F degrees when we parked at the beach for a picnic lunch. Within a few dozen miles of leaving the coast and driving inland, the temperature soon reached 100F.
Our last stop in Northern California was along the Pacific Coast Highway. We spent the night in Fort Bragg which was really just a convenient pit stop on our way back to San Jose.
Everything went smoothly on the trip. No flight delays. No car trouble. No major problems with the hotels or airbnb. The kids got along just fine and I don’t think they asked “are we there yet” a single time!
It was a really fun trip that checked a couple of boxes for me. All three kids were able to travel with us since we worked around their work and school schedules. And we were able to visit a very scenic part of the country that none of us have been to before.
How we booked the trip for almost free:
- Flights on Southwest using points for four of us plus one free companion pass ticket
- Hotels using Choice Privileges, Wyndham, Marriott, and Chase Ultimate Rewards points
- 2 nights in an Airbnb using the Airbnb gift cards I bought using Chase Ultimate Reward points several years ago
- Rental car booked for $270 for the week with Capital One Venture X annual $300 travel credit (ok we kind of pay $395/yr for this card so maybe call this a $270 expense)
- Most meals paid for using several $10 Paze credits. Plus ~$25 at Taco Bell using Chase Doordash credits and DD gift card from Chase
The only significant out of pocket cost was ~$200 in gas for the rental car. Overall the trip probably would have cost about $5,000 if we paid regular cash prices. However, we managed to spend almost nothing by using points and miles very strategically. We did have to stay in a Motel 6 one night when there weren’t too many better options (but it was totally fine for a quick 12 hour pit stop).
Get free travel like us
The Chase Sapphire Reserve card is offering a 100,000 point sign up bonus right now. I can transfer these 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.
Capital One Venture X card
Another favorite travel card in my wallet is the Capital One Venture X card. The Venture X card is a “keeper” for me. First off, it comes with a $750 sign up bonus after spending $4,000 in the first three months. The bonus is paid in the form of 75,000 bonus points that you can redeem against any travel purchases from anywhere. Then you earn a solid 2 points per dollar spent forever! The other big perk is airport lounge access. You get free entry for yourself into Priority Pass and Capital One airport lounges (guests cost extra since February 1, 2026). Add to this primary rental car insurance coverage and a bunch of other perks.
The Capital One Venture X card does have one catch – a $395 annual fee. But they reward you every year with an easy to use $300 travel discount plus $100 worth of points. Together, that makes $400 they give you annually which completely offsets the annual fee. Since the annual fee is offset in full by travel credits each year, I personally plan on keeping the Venture X card forever since the card benefits are so great.
Closing thoughts
Another month of wonderful early retirement!
We had a good summer and the trip to California was a great way to wrap it up.
Back home, we’ve been prepping for our next few trips. In October and November we’re visiting Barcelona, Spain and then taking a cruise in the Mediterranean, hitting several new-to-us ports along the way.
We have several more trips planned for December through March 2027, then a big break that may eventually get filled with something.
Our big trip next summer will be Norway for about a month in June and July. We’ve booked flights, a rental car, and about two weeks of hotels at this point. It’s peak travel season in Norway so I want to make sure we don’t miss out. I’m hoping I can rebook the flights to something cheaper but if not we’ll make it happen with the slightly expensive frequent flyer award tickets currently booked.
I’m really looking forward to the Norway trip. A month of exploring Norway’s western fjord region’s most magnificent mountains and waterways.
Our son will be traveling with us during the summer trip. He only has a few more summers before he might get busy with college, work, and other pursuits. So we’re making the most of it right now.
Okay folks, that’s it for me for now. See you later, when we are back home in Raleigh for a couple of weeks around Thanksgiving.
Is everyone glad the summer heat will soon be gone? Or wishing we had a few more summer days of fun?
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You are living the good life. Keep going!
Outstanding trip(s), Justin. Glad you are enjoying things especially with the whole family. Like here in TN I am sure you guys are warm in Raleigh still. Even here on the Plateau at almost 2K feet in elevation we are still looking at 90 degree temps for the next week at a minimum. Before we hit the road for months later this year I have a lot to get done, but the heat is putting a real crimp in my work style.
Enjoy the Mediterranean cruise! We have four on Celebrity in Nov-Dec, including something we have never done before, a back to back to back totaling 21 days. Packing will be a little bit different for that series. Stay cool, my friend, and travel safely.
I will be in Barcelona late October to take a tranatlantic cruise to Florida. I quit my PT job a year ago and have enjoyed a lot of travel in 2026. Plans for 2027 are just getting started.
So glad you made it to Smith River! We used to live a couple hours away from here and that’s my favorite spot in the redwoods for swimming (on a rare sunny day, of course).
Congrats on the high-school milestone, and the Redwoods look amazing. A small cash-management thought for the months between those quarterly dividend payments: with the Fed back to hiking, T-bills and Treasury money market funds are paying close to 4% again. Because North Carolina taxes income, the fact that Treasury interest is exempt from state tax is worth a little extra over a bank account paying the same rate. It’s also neutral on the ACA side, since both count toward MAGI the same way, so there’s no subsidy trade-off in moving the spending buffer from bank savings to T-bills. Small numbers individually, but it adds up over the long quiet stretches between dividend months.
Norway sounds amazing! We’re going for a week road trip in a few weeks from San Francisco to Santa Barbara. Now I wish we would’ve planned north for the Redwoods. I Southwest was still $28-$31 to chose seats (2 places each way from Atl) which was not a fee in the past. Hotels are Chase UR for a couple, cash for a couple cheaper nights south of Big Sur, IHG in SF, but I couldn’t find hotels in Santa Barbara with points.
No more total balances? I looked forward to seeing those balance updates. To tell the truth I used them as a point of comparison to my returns.