Lifestyle Archives - Page 7 of 18

Vietnam: From Saigon High Rises to the Mekong Delta

September 4, 2019 JustinRoG Lifestyle, Travel

What do you do when you save a bunch of money and retire at 33? Spend months at a time traveling the world of course!

This summer we spent eight weeks exploring the temples, palaces, and waterways of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand in Southeast Asia.

In today’s article, we cover the first segment of the trip where we visited two cities in Vietnam. After a looooong flight from the East Coast of the USA, we landed in Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon, where we stayed for eight nights. Then we visited Can Tho, Vietnam in the Mekong River Delta region for a three night stay. After leaving the Mekong Delta, we headed to Phnom Penh, Cambodia (with a short one night pit stop in Ho Chi Minh City en route).

May 2019 Financial Update – Lazy May Daze Edition

June 10, 2019 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

May was another successful month of early retirement. We took it easy and enjoyed a relatively slow month of leisure with family and friends. I spent a few days being a “real” blogger and influencer by attending Camp FI in Virginia where I gave a presentation titled “FIRE for Fun!”. That makes me a real blogger, right?

Our finances were a mixed bag in May. Our net worth dropped precipitously by $87,000 to end the month at $2,022,000. Fortunately our cash flow situation was much better. Income remained decent at $3,438 while our expenses dropped significantly to only $752 for the month of May. When income exceeds outflow, you can’t worry about finances too much!

April 2019 Financial Update – Cuba Cruise Edition

May 10, 2019 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

Time flies when you’re having fun! We’re almost half way through May and I’m just now updating our April financial snapshot. We have been vacationing, volunteering, and enjoying the wonderful springtime weather. What can I say? I’m retired and don’t always have time to focus on this blog!

We had a great financial month during April. Our net worth climbed $47,000 to $2,109,000 thanks to great stock market returns. Our income for the month remained strong at $4,794 while our expenses were rather low at $1,591.

Here is a more detailed look at our April finances along with some pictures to show what the life of an early retiree looks like.

March 2019 Financial Update – Springtime Pollen Edition

April 9, 2019 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

Spring is definitely here in Raleigh. Warm afternoon temperatures bring us outside while green clouds of pollen filling the air push us back inside. And everything is in bloom!

We had a busy March as you’ll see in this article. April will be no different. We are just a few days away from departing for our one week cruise to Jamaica, Mexico, and Cuba. When we return, the last week of April will be filled with volunteering at our kid’s school all week and a big birthday party to close out the month.

Our March financials look great. Net worth climbed $13,000 to $2,062,000. Our spending remained low at $2,299 while our income continued to be strong at $4,553. We just wrapped up another month where income greatly exceeded spending.

Mexico City: Not Just Tacos and Tequila

March 21, 2019 JustinRoG Lifestyle, Travel

To celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary, we visited Mexico City for an 11 day vacation (without kids!). We have visited the city several times before, so we didn’t plan on hitting the tourist trail too hard while in the city.

On most days we spent a few hours sightseeing and many more hours relaxing, dining, and indulging in other forms of laziness. Some days were more successfully lazy than others, but overall we took it easy.

While in the city, we visited the museums and colonial buildings in the historic center of town, toured a half dozen districts on the edge of town, and took a day trip to the pyramids at Teotihuacan.

February 2019 Financial Update – Mexico City Edition

March 8, 2019 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

We’re back for another monthly update on the life and times (and finances) of Root of Good! February was a whirlwind of activity that had us out and about exploring the Raleigh area during periods of unseasonably warm weather. Then we hopped on a jet plane to go south of the border for the last half of the month. We spent a wonderful twelve days in Mexico City celebrating our fifteenth anniversary (and we left the kids at home with grandma!).

One of the magical moments in early retirement is when you head off for a couple weeks of vacation somewhere exciting and your net worth shoots way up. You don’t do a thing and you grow wealthier!

That happened for us in February. Our net worth climbed by $45,000 to $2,049,000 while we were traipsing around the woods in Raleigh and hopping on subways and eating tacos across Mexico City.

Income remained strong for the month of February at $4,430. Expenses dropped to $1,537 for the month which is somewhat surprising given we spent half the month living it up on vacation.

January 2019 Financial Update

February 11, 2019 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

January was another busy month for us in the Root of Good household. We worked hard planning our summer trip to Southeast Asia. We got outside and played a bit when the weather was nice. And we bundled up against the cold when winter returned with full force.

Financially, last month was quite a blockbuster. Our net worth jumped $133,000 to re-cross the mythical $2,000,000 mark and land at $2,004,000 by month’s end. Income was strong at $3,779 while expenses remained within our budget at $2,937.

Let’s dive into January’s financial update!

Doing Nothing is Okay – No Apology Required

January 28, 2019 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle

Do you need to be productive in retirement? Or is it okay to screw around all day and live a life of leisure? Or does the secret to retirement success lie somewhere in between the two extremes of productivity and leisure?

There is no right answer to the question of how busy you must be in retirement to be fulfilled and content. It depends on what drives you and makes you happy. For me, the first six months of retirement were pretty busy as I was used to a decade of full time work and I continued the productivity trend straight out of the office and into retirement.

Within two weeks of leaving my full time job, I started this blog and felt compelled to maintain a strict publishing schedule of two or three posts per week. That meant I was spending a lot of time researching, writing, proofreading, and figuring out the technical and business side of the blog. All the while, I was the one watching our one year old son all day! Busy, busy times. And not much time for relaxation and fun.

Our Cost of Raising a Child: $3,200 Per Year Including World Travel

September 25, 2018 JustinRoG Financial Independence, Lifestyle, Personal Finance

When you have kids it’s impossible to retire early, right? I found out that may not be true in all cases. Like my own. We have three kids and still managed to retire early. But how is it possible when kids are soooooo expensive?

The US Department of Agriculture publishes the “Expenditures on Children By Families Annual Report” which examines the cost to raise children in America. The headline number that gets a lot of press is the total cost to raise a child from age 0 to 17: $233,610. And that doesn’t include the cost of college!

Almost a quarter of a million dollars seems really high to me, so I’m diving into our kid-spending to see what it actually costs to raise our three kids.

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.