Financial Independence Archives - Page 11 of 22

August 2018 Financial Update – Back to School Edition

September 5, 2018 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Personal Finance

And just like that, our summer break is over. The kids have been back in school for a week already and us parents are enjoying our peace and tranquility during the middle of the day. The summer weather, however, lingers on. It’s been hot and humid for the past week. I’m looking forward to real fall with it’s cool mornings and lower humidity.

Financially, August treated us very well. Our net worth went up by $14,000 to $2,098,000 thanks to mildly positive stock market returns. Our income remained very strong in August at $5,923 while our expenses remained rather modest at $2,565 for the month.

Any month where your income exceeds spending and your net worth goes up is a good one! Now let’s jump into the details.

5 Lessons Learned in 5 Years of Early Retirement

August 27, 2018 JustinRoG Awesome!, Financial Independence, Lifestyle

Well folks, today marks five years of early retirement for me. Flashback: on August 26, 2013 I spent the morning sitting in my office at work, catching up on emails after a week long vacation. Then my boss walks in, says “you’re fired”, hands me the dismissal paperwork and I’m on my way. I spend the rest of the morning at home puzzling over my spreadsheets to verify that I am, in fact, financially independent.

Analysis result: I was financially independent. Our initial budgeted spending of $32,000 per year was only three percent of our total investment balance. In other words, way less than the 4% rule dictates.

Fast forward five years and here we are. Five years older and five years wiser. Our kids were age 1, 7, and 8 when I retired and now they are 6, 12, and 13! They are very different people than they were five years ago.

Right after I quit working, I was still in production mentality when I started this blog. I always wanted to do something internet-y and the blog was the first thing that came to mind. After a weekend of googling “how to start a blog” and other extremely basic search queries, I had figured it all out. I registered the rootofgood.com domain name and published my first article on September 11th, 2013.

July 2018 Financial Update – Home Again!

August 6, 2018 JustinRoG Awesome!, Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

It’s early August and we’ve been at home for about two weeks after spending a month vacationing in the Bahamas during June and July. Summer is flying by incredibly fast because we have been so busy!

Our oldest two kids just wrapped up two weeks in summer camp. The whole family has enjoyed lunch, dinner, or play dates with several groups of friends that we haven’t seen all summer. Back to school shopping is mostly done. And school starts in three short weeks!

In the meantime, our lazy investment portfolio continues to be busy as well (in a very hands-off way). Our net worth shot up by $46,000 during the month of July to $2,084,000. Spending was particularly low at $1,389 while income remained strong at $4,361 for the month.

I Retired at 33 By Tracking Every Dollar I Spent

July 12, 2018 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Mailbag, Personal Finance

“JM”, a new commenter on the blog, left a great comment asking about tracking spending and how that helps you get to Financial Independence.

“Do you track all your monthly spending, no matter how minute? Did this help get you to Financial Independence? And how?” -JM

The quick answer is yes, I did track all spending down to the dollar while working towards FI. And looking back, tracking everything I spent was pivotal to accelerating my journey to FI.

June 2018 Financial Update – Bahamas Edition

July 5, 2018 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

We’re living it up in the Bahamas on vacation right now! I’m taking a break from the waves, sun, and sand to provide the regular monthly financial/life update. At this point we are half way through our one month stay. Although there isn’t much to do here beyond swim in the ocean, play in the pool, and walk along the canals and marshland, we’re having a good time. We brought lots of books and the wifi and air conditioning are top notch!

Did our finances have a nice month too? In June, we did well from a cash flow perspective with income from investments and the blog exceeding our expenditures. Income was $8,867 while expenses were only $3,554. The stock market wasn’t very kind to us in June, so our net worth dropped by $16,000 to $2,038,000. There’s still enough money in the investment accounts to keep me smiling in the Bahamas!

May 2018 Financial Update – Animals Everywhere!

June 4, 2018 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Personal Finance

Over here in the Root of Good household we’re counting down the days till summer. It feels like it’s already here though! May was a lot warmer than usual with highs in the 80’s most days and lots of humidity, including a jolt of moisture from a very early season Tropical Storm Alberto. I suppose this will be good training for our month in the Bahamas starting in two weeks!

How did we make out money-wise in May? Our net worth climbed $21,000 to bring the total to $2,054,000. Reasonably good stock market returns were the main driver of net worth gains in May. Income remained solid at $3,426 for the month. With $3,366 in spending, our May expenses climbed to the highest point for 2018. However, it’s still great news that our spending is less than our income!

Loneliness – An Unfounded Fear in Early Retirement?

May 29, 2018 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle

“I never want to quit working because I’ll be socially isolated and I won’t be able to make new friends.” Is this a legitimate concern or one of the worst objections to early retirement?

There is reason in worrying about loneliness in retirement but it’s not a good reason to work forever, especially if you don’t like your job! Getting out of a stressful work situation will make you a nicer, better person and therefore more likable and friendly.

If work is your only source of friends and social interaction, then perhaps it’s time to broaden your social network and look for friendship in other places.

April 2018 Financial Update – Busy Times!

May 7, 2018 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

April was a blast! It was also an incredibly busy month. We helped out at the kid’s elementary school by chaperoning a field trip and running the school’s spring carnival raffle. I spent four days at CampFI Midatlantic where I presented “How to Develop an Early Retirement Budget”. JD Roth stopped by the house for a few hours before heading up to the camp. The whole family did a staycation for spring break. We assembled a couple more bicycles for us adults. To close out April we threw a big birthday party for our six year old. I’m pretty sure I was less busy when I was working!

In financial terms, April was a good month. After a couple months of losses, our net worth reversed course and climbed by a modest $9,000 to $2,033,000. Our spending remained low at $1,977 which was just a tiny bit more than our April income of $1,837.

March 2018 Financial Update – Spring is Here!

April 9, 2018 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

Another month of early retirement is in the books! March was a busy month for us. The weather is finally nice around Raleigh so we enjoyed more time outdoors. The kids had fun too, with our youngest going on a field trip to the children’s museum that we chaperoned. Our older two children bought themselves bicycles and have been out and about riding on these warm spring days.

Financially, March was a repeat of February. Due to downward movement in the stock market, our net worth dropped by $32,000 to a still-respectable $2,024,000. Our income of $5,659 far surpassed our spending of $2,025 which means our cash stash continues to grow slightly.

February 2018 Financial Update – Weathering Big Losses

March 6, 2018 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Personal Finance

Time for another monthly update now that I have wrapped up month #54 in my early retirement journey! Spring arrived a little early in North Carolina and that means more time outdoors for us. Goodbye two weeks of “real” winter, we hardly knew ye!

From a financial perspective, February was a tough month punctuated by a strong dip in the stock market, officially putting us in a “correction” with the Dow and S&P 500 index both registering declines greater than 10%. At month end our net worth was down by $58,000 to a “mere” $2,056,000. The silver lining is that our income for the month remained strong at $4,736 while expenses of $3,108 tracked closely to our $3,333 budget. Spending less than you “make” soothes the sting of a big shift downward in net worth.