We made it back home! We’ve been back in the USA for a few days and now that the dust has settled, I’m here to recap the last month of our early retirement adventures.
During July, we spent a week in Croatia. The we departed Croatia where we spent almost two weeks in the Julian Alps in Slovenia. After our alpine adventures, we returned to Croatia for a weeklong stay at a farm in the hills outside the town of Samobor. Toward the end of the month, we left Croatia and headed east where we spent a week in the town of Eger, Hungary.
While in Slovenia, we revisited some favorite places that we visited on our last trip to Slovenia five years ago (covered in two previous blog posts on Ljubljana, Slovenia and the Julian Alps).
Financially, we had an excellent month. Our net worth shot up by $125,000 to end the month at $2,718,000. Our income of $2,743 in July was slightly less than our expenses of $2,947 for the month.
Let’s jump into the details from last month.
Income
Investment income totaled $395 in July. Our equity index funds and ETFs pay dividends quarterly at the end of March, June, September, and December. As a result, we had a rather small amount of investment income last month. Here’s more on our dividend investments.
Blog income totaled $1,747 for the month. This is slightly higher than the average blog income I’ve seen in 2022.
My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) dropped to zero in July. I had to postpone some consulting sessions due to really bad internet connections at our Airbnb’s in Europe during the first half of our trip, so I pushed some consulting revenue to August. But August will likely be a slow month for consulting income as well.
Tradeline sales income totaled $175 in July. This is lower than the past couple of months but still a nice chunk of change for minimal effort. August tradeline sales should be significantly higher. I ramped up my tradeline sales in 2020 and discussed it in a bit more detail in my October 2020 monthly post and in my July 2021 monthly post.
For July, my “deposit income” totaled $36. This income comes 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 $25 purchase through Rakuten, you’ll get a $10 sign up bonus.
July Youtube income totaled $167. Youtube only pays out when you exceed $100 in accumulated revenue. Recently, my Youtube earnings have been just under $100 per month on average, so I’ll be getting paid a bit under $200 every two months.
Here is the Youtube channel for the curious. It’s random travel videos, birds, kids, and a couple of DIY videos. There are only a few main videos that bring in most of the traffic (and revenue!).
The final $220 of income for July came from credit card cash back and bonuses. I received a $25 credit from my Fidelity card from a spending promotion they ran in the spring. I also received $195 in reimbursement from my Capital One Venture X card. The Venture X came with a $200 reimbursement for spending on short term vacation rentals and I had a $195 transaction last month that triggered the reimbursement. I’ll get another $5 if I spend more on vacation rentals during 2022.
If you’re interested in tracking your income and expenses like I do, then check out Personal Capital (it’s free!). All of our savings and spending accounts (including checking, money market, and five credit cards) are all linked and updated in real time through Personal Capital. We have accounts all over the place, and Personal Capital makes it really easy to check on everything at one time.
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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 Personal Capital.
Expenses
Now let’s take a look at July expenses:
In total, we spent $2,947 during July which is about $400 less than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Travel spending represents almost all of our spending from July.
Detailed breakdown of spending:
Travel – $2,749:
We spent the whole month of July traveling in Europe, hence the much higher than normal travel spending.
The largest single travel expense in July was a $900 gift card purchase that I used to pay for our back to back cruises in October. I have a little bit left on the gift card that I’ll use to cover the mandatory gratuities on board the October cruises.
The remaining $1,849 in travel spending was for our day to day expenses in Europe. That means we spent about $60 per day in July for everything other than lodging and the car rental.
Where did the money go? It’s an educated guess because some of the money was ATM withdrawals and I wasn’t tracking every euro, Croatian kuna, and Hungarian forint that we spent in cash.
Here is a rough estimate of what we spent in Europe during the month of July:
- groceries, toiletries, household supplies – $500
- restaurants – $600
- gas for the rental car – $200
- parking and tolls – $150
- admission fees to various attractions – $400
Groceries and Restaurants
We spent about half the month in Croatia where the restaurants were relatively cheap and plentiful. So we dined out a lot in those places.
However, when we were in Slovenia, the restaurants were much higher priced (and offered less variety and worse quality!) so we cooked most of our meals at our Airbnb. There are pros and cons to staying in the middle of nowhere.
Pro: it’s beautiful and peaceful and quiet and we are surrounded by nature.
Con: restaurants are more sparse and the few restaurants available know they have a monopoly on your dining dollars. And they don’t have to worry too much about quality because you’re a tourist and you probably won’t come back anyway!
This is a traditional dish served all over the former Yugoslavian countries and the Balkans. The red sauce is “ajvar” (pronounced “ayvar”) that’s kind of like tomato sauce or ketchup but with mashed up roasted bell peppers instead of tomatoes. I think this was about $12-14 USD.
Gas, Parking and Tolls
Our rental car got about 43 miles per gallon. And gas was “only” $4.50 to $6.50 per gallon, so we really didn’t spend a ton on gas (about $200 in July). The tolls during July weren’t too bad either. We drove down the Istrian peninsula one day and spent about $25 on round trip tolls for a couple of hours of driving.
Otherwise, the tolls were just a few dollars here and there, plus $15 for a one week toll pass for Slovenia. We had no problem staying on local roads for the first week in Slovenia, so we avoided the $15 toll pass charge for the first week.
Parking wasn’t too expensive overall compared to parking in the USA. In most places, the parking ranged from $0.50 to $1.50 per hour. Since parking was so cheap, I didn’t try too hard to find free parking options. Instead, we parked close to the places we were visiting so we could spend more time and energy exploring the attractions instead of walking to/from the car.
However, charging for parking is a lot more common in Europe than it is in the USA. As it turns out, we had to pay admission fees to various attractions, and on top of that, pay for parking as well. But at least it’s just a few dollars where we visited in Europe instead of $10-20+ for parking in the USA at some attractions.
Admission fees/experiences
We didn’t really spend that much on admission fees and tickets for sightseeing. And when we did, the prices were fairly reasonable. For example, the amphitheater in Pula was about $30 for the whole family. The Postojna Cave in Slovenia was about $115 for the five of us, and it included a train ride into the cave (and back out again!).
We bought a combo ticket for several attractions near Lake Bohinj in Slovenia. For $160 total for the five of us, we got a round trip cable car ride to the top of a mountain, a hearty meal at the top of the mountain in a ski lodge, plus a round trip boat ride across the lake, and admission to a thousand year old church. Two days of outings and a hot meal for $160 for the whole family is a great deal.
Spending philosophy
I’ll just add a quick note on our travel spending. We just kind of spent whenever we wanted on whatever came along. We focused on getting a good deal when possible and economizing when it made sense. We paid for the attractions that we wanted to see. We dined out quite a bit when restaurants were decent and not jacked up tourist prices. We drove the rental car all over exploring, even though gas was $6.50 per gallon in most places.
In the grocery store, we mostly grabbed whatever looked good and fresh and unique instead of trying to get the cheapest staples possible.
The goal hasn’t been to minimize our spending for a long time. Instead, the goal is to maximize our value per dollar spent. We know we could spend about twice what we are currently spending, so we don’t need to be particularly frugal at this point in our financial journey. Maybe if the stock market crashes, we’ll tighten the purse strings and spend less money. But for now, when we are traveling and unique food or experiences cross our path, we will consume them!
And of course we still maintain a frugal tilt in the background of our spending. I love getting travel for cheap/free. It’s like a game to me.
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Utilities – $159:
The total utility spending back home in Raleigh was $159 last month.
We spent $40 on the electric bill and $98 for the water/sewer/trash bill. The natural gas bill, which provides heating and hot water, totaled $21 for last month.
These bills included a little bit of usage in June before we left home. Included in that total utility spending is almost $100 per month just for the connections, regardless of how much water, gas, or electricity we actually consume.
Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $40:
Our current 2022 health insurance is completely free thanks to very generous Affordable Care Act subsidies that we receive due to our low ~$45,000 per year Adjusted Gross Income.
The “American Rescue Plan Act” passed in March 2021 makes the Affordable Care Act premiums even cheaper through 2022. Households with modified adjusted gross incomes (MAGI) below 150% of the federal poverty level get select silver-level health insurance plans completely free.
For the adults in the household, we spend $20 per month ($240 per year) for a basic dental insurance plan for each of us (or $40 per month in total). Our routine dental exams and cleanings with the occasional x-ray have increased in price recently. The cost is now $125 (no x-ray) or $170 (with x-ray).
With two routine visits per year, we will spend almost $300 per person. A $240 insurance plan provides those same services for free. And we get some minimal level of insurance if one of us needs a filling during the year.
Gas – $0:
We didn’t spend anything for gas for our minivan in Raleigh because we weren’t home!
Cable/Satellite/Internet – $0:
We generally pay $18 per month for a local reduced rate package due to having a lower income and having kids. 30 mbit/s download, 4 mbit/s upload. Right now the cost of the internet service is temporarily reduced to $0 due to the “Affordable Connectivity Program”.
Total Year-To-Date Spending for 2022
Our spending totaled $20,104 for the first seven months of 2022. This is about $3,000 less than the $23,333 we budgeted for seven months of spending in our $40,000 annual early retirement budget.
In early August, we finally got the financial aid award for our daughter’s community college program. She will get $3,200 in grants and scholarships for the fall semester. Tuition is $1,400 and books should be under $500 so she’ll probably have a bit over $1,000 of “free” money per semester. It’s good to see the costs and financial aid falling in line with what I was forecasting. And our 529 will remain untouched for now.
This week, we go to the DMV for our oldest daughter’s driver’s license exam. Assuming she passes, the much higher auto insurance bills begin once she’s licensed to drive. When I requested a Proof of Insurance certificate, our insurance agent told me it would be about $1,000 per year to add her onto the policy. That’s about what I was expecting.
Which brings us to the next big expense. We hope to buy a new used car for our daughter to drive to community college (and maybe ferry her siblings around some!). Used car prices are finally starting to drop since February. I hope car prices continue that downward trend all summer so we won’t be paying $10,000 for a 15 year old Ford Escort. A little tiny baby recession in used car prices will be a welcome relief for us.
Overall, our spending looks good for the rest of the year. But this might be the year that we finally break the $40,000 spending level that we have budgeted for all along. And that’s totally fine because our portfolio has gone up quite a bit since I retired nine years ago, even after adjusting for inflation.
Monthly Expense Summary for 2022:
- January – $1,193
- February – $2,535
- March – $5,356
- April – $1,321
- May – $2,972
- June – $3,782
- July – $2,947
Summary of annual spending from all years of 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 – $20,104 (year to date)
Net Worth: $2,718,000 (+$125,000)
Last month we were down $177,000 and now we are back up $125,000. We almost made up all the losses from June. Most of the year we’ve been treading water at just a few hundred thousand dollars under the $3 million mark. I think we’ll make it to $3 million eventually. Maybe in a few more months. Or maybe in a few more years!
Our income remains pretty decent from the various little side hustles I have. And our expenses remain somewhat moderate. So the net worth fluctuations don’t mean a lot since we aren’t necessarily pulling a ton of money from our portfolio every month. I mostly document the big net worth moves here for entertainment purposes for all of you reading this!
For the curious, our net worth reported above includes our home value (which is fully paid off). 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.
Life update
After a busy summer, I am looking forward to the slower pace of fall (and the cooler weather!). The kids will be fully back in school soon and we’ll have more tranquility in the house.
I’m looking forward to more bike rides, reading some books, finishing the computer game I started in February, and catching up on my Netflix queue. We’ll also be going on a 10 day cruise in October.
Soon we will start planning our next big adventure for the summer of 2023. South America might be where we visit. That was our plan for summer of 2020 but a certain virus had other plans for us (and the rest of the world). So we’ll see if we can do a reboot of our summer 2020 plans, or if we decide to go somewhere else.
Stay tuned!
Are you ready for summer to be over? Was it a good one for you?
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How does your daughter get more in financial aid than tuition? Is the excess considered taxable income?
I haven’t looked at the taxable considerations yet. I think the “need” for the award was based on their estimate of total cost of attendance. Tuition, books, and room and board primarily. I think the total cost was over $9000. So I assume anything less than that is non-taxable since it is for qualified educational expenses. I am also not sure if what she received is classified as all grants or some scholarships. Some say grants, some say scholarships. Didn’t ask, just going to take the $ and use it for books and other teen expenses. 🙂
Interestingly, when I was in college I did get quite a bit of financial aid, primarily scholarships. I actually had to report it as income and pay tax on it as I recall.
My son received a Pell Grant when he was at community college, and it exceeded the cost of tuition, books and fees. We had to pay tax on the excess. The 1098 has one box for grants and scholarships so I don’t think the government distinguishes between the two.
So cool that you spent a week in Eger! I haven’t heard anyone who has visited there. I went in 1997. They are the sister city for Gainesville, GA and I was traveling with Gainesville people on business. The Mayor picked us up and showed us around. Had a great meal in a lovely restaurant where the musicians played, “Georgia on My Mind” for us!
Cool! It’s really not a big tourist destination for Americans I don’t think. Our airbnb hosts didn’t speak any English (their 14 yr old son translated for us). But they, like many other locals, spoke German as the lingua franca. So occasionally I struggled with my broken German to be understood 🙂
Eger is a cool little city. We mostly chose it as a base for exploring nearby stuff spread around the northeastern part of Hungary. But the city itself is worth at least a couple of days of exploration. We found a cool little restaurant downtown that served cafe style food and was really really cheap. Like $18 total for very large portions for the 5 of us. No band playing Georgia on My Mind though!
“ We spent about half the month in Croatia where the restaurants were relatively cheap and plentiful. So we dined out a lot in those places.
However, when we were in Slovenia, the restaurants were much higher priced…”
Interesting! We experience the exact opposite. But that could be because we spent most of our time on the Dalmatian coast instead of Zagreb in Croatia. Or maybe Slovenia has gone up in price during the past couple of months.
I’m jealous you were able to go up the cable car in Lake Bohinj. When we are there it was closed for maintenance. Oh well. Next time. Absolutely loved Lake Bohinj and it was our fav place in Slovenia. Which lake was your fav?
The prices in Slovenia weren’t crazy. Maybe $11-13 for a burger and fries and $8-9 for some simple pasta. A promising sounding local “street food” hut was offering $16 bowls of “venison” stew that was probably pork, but it looked a little too sketchy to pay $16 for anything at it, so we skipped that. Choices were limited and we were pretty far from any real city. Bled was the closest city 10-15 minutes away when we were near there and lake Bohinj. And when we were in Soca Valley we were 5 minutes from Bovec but that place was crazy busy. Maybe it’s peak season, but all the restaurants were packed and the reviews were great in general (“we waited 40 minutes for a burger and fries” kind of stuff). Just decided to get some fresh bakery goods like pizza and burek, and some meat at the grocery store and cook stuff in our house instead of wait in line at a restaurant!
And yes, I think Dubrovnik area is pretty expensive. I’ve heard 2-3x the price for meals vs the middle and northern half of Croatia. And for us, it was tourist area of Slovenia vs non-tourist area (suburban Rijeka and center city Zagreb where there are tourist places and also less touristy places).
And as far as prices, I think everything in Slovenia has definitely gone up quite a bit in the past 5 years. Even in the last few months, prices jumped 20% some places (looking at Google Maps photos for menus, you can see the jumps!). The affordable pizza place we went to 5 yrs ago has almost doubled in price and the quality went way down hill. 🙁 Just didn’t have any great experiences with restaurants where we visited in Slovenia unfortunately.
As far as lakes and natural beauty in Slovenia, I liked the Soca River valley the best (and the views from Vrsic Pass). It was easier to get away from the crowds and find a little spot of paradise. Lake Bled was SLAMMED with tourists when we were there. Couldn’t find parking to rent the little boats to go over to the island and it was really hot, so we gave up and parked on the other side and walked around a bit instead. Then got out of there 🙂 Lake Bohinj was definitely better than Bled in terms of being able to enjoy the lake/water but we didn’t swim in it. Just rode around on the boat and walked along it some and took in the beauty. And went up the cable car.
That is beautiful scenery there in Slovenia. Is it possible to take a train or bus there or do you have to rent a car?
It is theoretically possible to take a bus there (no train into the Soca Valley as far as I know). From what I observed, but service is somewhat limited and sparse. I think the bus runs roughly every 2 hours, or in some cases only 1x in the morning and 1x in the late afternoon (so you can visit from 9 am to 5 pm for example). So it’s possible but rather inconvenient. I did see people using buses, waiting for buses and becoming exasperated waiting for buses. Felt kind of bad when we saw 1 family with kids waiting on the side of a busy mountain road. They were asking others walking around if they were also waiting for the bus. And we heard the family say that they had been waiting there for 2 hours and hoped they were in the right spot. I do think the bus came shortly thereafter because we didn’t see them when we came back to the car an hour or so later.
If you’re on a backpacker budget, the bus might work. Just plan on at least double the time to get anywhere. And be okay waiting 1-2 hours if you don’t show up at the right time. After a long day of playing in the water or hiking, I was certainly glad to get in an air-conditioned car and drive the 5 to 20 minutes back to our Airbnb 🙂
And getting into and out of the valley looks like 3-4 buses or trains minimum to get to the Capital or to other nearby bigger cities. I just checked the route we took from Bovec to Bled and it was just under 2 hours by car (except we stopped a half dozen times for sightseeing along the drive!!). But by bus it is ~4 hours, and the bus only comes every 2 hours after 9:30 am. Needless to say, the rental car is a huge improvement in convenience and comfort at a relatively small cost versus paying for 5 sets of bus tickets.
Very nice pictures, get a sense of the food and lifestyle there. Did you find that tipping and gratuity customs are different there or still tip since we do that in the States?
Also, curious as to how your daughter got “grants”, since doesn’t FAFSA take parental assets into account, as well as the 529? I know for health insurance its based on income, so just wondering how you went about that. Unless they are private scholarships which obviously don’t depend on public funding or FAFSA requirements.
I don’t think we had to fill out asset info on the FAFSA. Maybe it’s the new guidelines that they just passed? I just had the FAFSA folks pull the data from my IRS tax filings and it autopopulated stuff. About half of my daughter’s grants are other stuff besides the Pell Grant too (a state funded grant and a small grant from the state lottery). And in North Carolina, we have a grant for all community college students regardless of financial need, that pays for all community college tuition for recent high school graduates. So maybe that was the state grant that she got? Not really sure.
The asset question comes after you have the IRS pull your tax info and is something separate. It’s has been a bit weird on my end though.
For my oldest child, it just had me enter my assets. With my oldest son, the question was “Do you have assets in excess of XX?” If you answered yes, then you entered your assets. And for my next son, it said something to the effect that we didn’t need to enter assets because of our income (seemed to imply that anyone with income below a certain amount is not expected to have assets).
Anyway, it just seems strange that I didn’t have a standard experience across all three kids (who were/are in college at the same time).
That is strange! I’m no expert on this, I just put in whatever info they require and it’s mostly a black box to me. I did try to hand-calculate what I should get and it was very complicated, but ended up being pretty close (within 10%).
Might want to be careful, because I know when I went over a decade ago we did have to input parental assets, like Mary says below above a certain threshold. They might do it differently for community college though they say the audits happen after the student actually receives aid. Just a heads up, not trying to alarm.
https://www.fastweb.com/financial-aid/articles/what-happens-if-you-deliberately-don-t-report-assets-on-the-fafsa
Well if we have to give it back it’s no big deal. They guarantee free tuition for all NC high school graduates at the community college level. So we’d lose the federal grant and get the free state money in that event.
I do think they changed the rules this year where you get a full $6600 federal grant if you are under 175% of the Federal Poverty Level, so we should 100% be in the clear next year.
I’m guessing you checked the box that your kids received free/reduced lunch this year and your income was under $50k which triggered the simplified needs test which ignores assets.
Probably so. I didn’t really research things for this year since college was kind of a last minute decision. The FAFSA also does a decent job of auto-populating, such as pulling your tax return from the IRS, so there wasn’t a ton of data entry required from my side.
Next year it’s going to be much easier for people working towards FI on moderate incomes to qualify for the auto $0 EFC/SAI w/ full pell grant since it’s now going to be tied to AGI rather than gross income. A couple with 2-3 kids making a combined $100k+ could potentially get the full pell grant if they maxed their 401ks/HSA/FSAs which all pushdown AGI.
I’m no expert but based on when my kids were in college his yearly income is only 40k so his AGI qualifies him for most grants and scholarships. Same case for his use of the ACA for health insurance.
My income was slightly higher for the 2020 base year (wasn’t trying to lower it bc I didn’t know we’d have a kid in college right now!). But going forward, yes, will have a very low AGI like 40k/yr.
How much extra effort would it be to double your income, or is the extra effort not worth it at all while you’re at a close to 0% withdrawal rate in any case?
Been thinking about what amount of saved income makes a real difference to the portfolio, versus taking simpler work. If you only add a percent or two to the portfolio per annum it seems to provide no real value, while 6% or more per annum still moves the needle somewhat?
I’m not sure what effort it would take to 2x my income. Maybe 10-20 hrs/wk? But then I might get that higher income for another couple of years as it tails off again.
It’s really not worth it given the high marginal taxes including phase out of benefits of ACA and FAFSA/student aid for kids along with some other income-based stuff. Maybe when the kids are out of the house and my effective marginal tax rate drops!
Thanks, makes sense as you have a number of other subsidies/benefits that net-off based on income levels.
I’m thinking on my own situation from a pure monetary point of view and it seems that adding 1% to the portfolio per annum isn’t really enough incentive to work harder if I’m already at 0% withdrawal rate. A higher contribution will get me to double portfolio size in real terms quicker, but the benefit tapers off quickly or requires the same rate of compounding of savings each year and as you say the marginal tax rates make it way harder!
Good luck with the next stage and college etc.
Great update and welcome home! What would you say is the approximate amount the 529 will fund your kids’ education expenses? We’re aiming for 50% in 529 and supplement the rest through after tax brokerage but hope they will get some grant and scholarships.
We targeted basically the same thing. Put $25k in (total for 3 kids) just to get the tax credits when they had them. Now they’ve grown to 80-90k. Which is about 10 years of tuition (so 3.5 years of tuition per kid). We’ll get some financial aid for sure, so it should be plenty. Might even have some left over!
hi Justin,
I am vacationing in Trieste and on the weekend we visited Postjana and the Jama and Predjama – the castle built over the cave. We ended up there randomly, but once there, I was 100% sure you would have visited, too, so it was really funny to read this a few days later. Did you visit the Predjama? The castle built over the cave? I was really impressed with the quality of the English translations and the saliency of the explanations.
Although I live in Europe, you have seen much more of it than I have. So I was glad to have at least been once place you’ve been, too!
I really like your blog and your low-key approach to money and spending, and I thank you for writing it.
We visited the castle but did not tour inside it. We had a fairly long drive from northern Croatia into Slovenia and on to the Soca Valley. With the Postojna cave tour, we didn’t have much time left to actually go inside the castle and explore. I read mixed reviews on how awesome it was inside, so decided to skip the interior tour. Very cool to see from the outside though!
Did you have your daughter do a year of community college so that she gets out of the requirement of living in the dorms at NC State her freshman year? We are in NC, and my kids have done dual enrollment, but they went away/are going away to college as freshmen. We have saved enough in their 529s to do that, though. If your kids want to live at college, will they pay for that themselves?
Hope you find a good, used car. We found a nice Subaru Forester on my neighborhood listserv in Feb. 2021 for my daughter in college. It had 107K miles and was $6500. I think that was just before prices went crazy.
The mandatory dorms and meal plan was definitely on our minds. I just looked and I think it adds about $13,000 to the otherwise modest cost of tuition. A bigger reason is that both of our kids are (or have already) graduated 1 year early, so it would mean moving into the dorms when they have recently turned 17. One kid might be okay (or she thinks she would be okay!) and the other is 100% dead-set against moving into the dorms at that age (at least ~355 days away from having to do it; opinions could change though!).
We are considering applying for the middle kid to go straight to NCSU just because she has a better chance at merit scholarships and her eventual major isn’t as easy to get into later as a transfer student. And it’s engineering track, so harder to get classes that eventually count when they do transfer from Wake Tech to NCSU.
Unsure what we’ll end up paying for. We have $ in the 529 for on-campus living if needed so accessing the money isn’t an issue. Just a matter of efficiency.
17 is a bit young for dorm living for some kids. It annoys me that North Carolina makes freshmen live on campus. Almost every college we have looked at elsewhere allows a “locals exemption,” if they require freshmen to live on campus at all. Even though my kids want to live away, that requirement really hurts those who are lower income. My high school senior is also applying to NC State (and refused to apply to UNC since we live in Chapel Hill!) Good luck to your daughters.
I will say, I worked with an engineer who went to Wake Tech for his first two years and they were a very solid worker. NC has a guaranteed transfer program if you get your BA.
But what I really wanted to ask: From previous conversations I know you didn’t pay off your student loans early in order to invest. Are you recommending that to your kids. Having them take out more loans than needed and holding them for the long term? I think there is both an annual cap and a lifetime cap, so you may need to look at utilizing those allotments.
Our college kid took the subsidized loans since it was 0% interest until she graduates (minus a 1% origination fee or something like that). We don’t actually have the $ yet, so not sure what she will do with the proceeds.
What about august? Curious to see how much it shot “down” ?
How about a lunch meeting in Raleigh? My treat. I ask you questions. Thanks
Where did you purchase the toll pass in Slovenia?
It’s been a while but I think we bought it online. Just put in your license plate number and buy it online.