Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! I’m back home in Raleigh for a few days between trips so I’ll give an update on what we’re up to.
We just returned from Europe where we spent two and a half weeks in late July and early August cruising around the British Isles, Ireland, Isle of Man, and northern Europe. We also had a full day in London before our cruise to explore the city.
The itinerary for our July/August cruise had some overlap with our June British Isles cruise however we still made it to many new ports of call this time around. The weather was also much nicer in July and August.
In the next couple of days we hit the road (skies? waves?) again for a week-long Caribbean cruise with two of our kids. Our middle child just graduated college and doesn’t have a job yet, so we’re squeezing in a short family vacation with her before she gets busy with work. When we return to Raleigh, it’s back to school for our son who will begin his last year of middle school.
On to our financial progress. July was a great month for our finances in every regard. Our net worth increased by $41,000 to end the month at $3,638,000. Our July income of $7,163 was way more than enough to cover our spending of $1,992 for the month.
Let’s jump into the details from last month.
Income
Investment income totaled $5,414 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 larger than normal amount of investment income paid at the very beginning of July. Here’s more on our dividend investments.
Blog income totaled $548 for last month. This represents fairly average blog income.
My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $0 during last month. Things have definitely slowed down in my consulting business. I don’t know if folks are less interested in early retirement or if it’s just a summertime slowdown. I’ve been pretty busy traveling anyway so booking zero hours last month worked out well given my schedule.
Tradeline sales income totaled $625 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.
My “deposit income” totaled $21. This 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.
My bank and credit card bonuses totaled $555 last month. Of the total, $300 came from some Chase spending bonuses. The other $255 was from the Pay Yourself Back feature on my Chase Sapphire Reserve card. I reimbursed myself for $255 of grocery purchases during July.
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 July expenses:
In total, we spent $1,992 last month which is about $1,300 less than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Groceries and travel were the top two spending categories from last month.
Detailed breakdown of spending:
Groceries – $836:
Mrs. Root of Good and I were in town for three and a half weeks of July. And our kids were here the entire month. Our grocery spending totaled $836 during that time period. It was a pretty typical month of grocery spending.
Travel – $528:
The biggest bit of travel spending in July was paying the taxes, fees, and gratuities for our daughter’s ticket for our August cruise. We held off paying for her ticket until the last minute since we didn’t know if she would be able to make the cruise given uncertainties with her potential work schedule. She doesn’t have a job yet so she’s free to join us on the cruise next week. $323 was the total for her cruise costs.
I booked some flights on Frontier to get us home after the cruise but it only cost $3 out of pocket. I used up the remaining $209 of my annual Capital One Venture X travel credit to pay for the bulk of the flight home for the four of us.
The remaining $201 of July travel spending was for our Europe cruise that included:
- a bunch of ubers/taxis
- a pair of round trip intercity train tickets for London to Dover, UK
- local transit fares throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland
- admission fees
- two light meals in London (including fish and chips in a pub!)
We typically skip the pricey excursions offered by the cruise ship and instead rely on some combination of walking, transit, or uber/taxis. In most ports this costs us $5-25 total to get around for the day.
One guest told us that the ship was charging $209 per person for an “excursion” on a steam train across the Isle of Man that we booked ourselves for $16. However we did have to walk 10 minutes from the port to get to the train station. I don’t mind getting paid $195 for a 10 minute walk!
Get free travel like us
If you are interested in getting free travel from your credit card like I do, consider the Chase Ink Preferred business card (my referral link). Right now, the Chase Ink Preferred business card offers an above average $900 worth of Chase Ultimate Rewards points that can be redeemed instantly for $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 60,000 point sign up bonus right now). With the Sapphire Reserve card, I can get 1.5x the points value by booking cruises, flights, hotels, or rental cars through their travel portal. For example, I used 165,000 Chase Ultimate Reward points to pay for the $2,475 in taxes, fees, and gratuities on two of my cruises. Or I can transfer those Ultimate rewards points to over a dozen travel partners’ airline/hotel programs like United, Southwest, or Hyatt.
Or consider the revamped Chase Sapphire Reserve card with the highest sign up bonus ever of 125,000 Ultimate Reward points. The higher annual fee of $795 comes with some added travel benefits that can more than offset the annual fee if you travel a decent amount. Plus the sign up bonus is worth $1500-2000 depending on how you use the bonus!
Capital One VentureX 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 can get yourself plus unlimited guests into Priority Pass lounges. And you and two of your guests can get into Plaza Premium network lounges and Capital One Lounges.
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.
Utilities – $426:
We spent $121 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month.
The electric bill was $283 for July. That’s mostly air conditioner usage. It was incredibly hot and humid last month. Fortunately the bills drop quite a bit by September.
The natural gas bill for last month totaled $22. Most of that is the monthly connection charge. Just a few dollars for the actual gas consumed by the water heater.
Gas – $61:
A tank of gas for our Hyundai Accent and a tank of gas for our minivan.
Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $56:
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.
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.
I prepaid an extra $24 for my dental insurance in July to cover two extra months. Truassure has majorly screwed up my bill and they wouldn’t take less than 3 months of premium payments online. Frustrating company to deal with but the insurance itself is a good value (but is it worth the headache?).
Restaurants – $47:
We got takeout two times during July totaling $47. For one of those purchases I used up some gift cards and Doordash credits from my Chase Sapphire Reserve card.
Home Improvement – $41:
$41 for multiple orders from Home Depot. They have free shipping on almost everything including small $1-2 items. I got some heavy duty staples, a 100 pack of cable staples, a storage container, a bucket, and a three pack of furnace filters.
Cable/Satellite/Internet – $0:
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. I prepaid the internet bill in June so the total spent in July was $0.
Spending for 2025 – Year to Date
We spent $24,132 during the first seven months of 2025. This annual spending is about $800 over our budgeted $23,333 for the first seven 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 don’t have many major planned expenses throughout the rest of 2025, so we might get back on budget at some point. I plan to book a lot more travel for 2025 and 2026 but most of that should be free from the credit card points and frequent flyer miles I have accumulated.
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
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 – $24,132 (through 7/31/2025)
new slideshow format I’m trying out:
Net Worth: $3,638,000 (+$41,000)
Our net worth increased by $41,000 during last month to end July at $3,638,000.
One of my favorite parts of the FIRE lifestyle is going on a cruise around Europe for two weeks while my portfolio passively makes $41,000 for me. I know I won’t make that much every month from my investments, but it’s not too far off from what I expect on average.
At a 9% rate of return I expect around $25,000 per month of portfolio gains on average. Of course there is always month-to-month volatility so it’s more like $50,000 up or down most months. With the long term trend being upwards.
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
Life is good. Our oldest daughter is fully employed after graduating college earlier in the year. Our middle child just graduated college a few weeks ago at age 18, and will hopefully land a job soon. Our son is about to return to school in a week where he will finish up middle school this year.
Financial freedom has granted us the joy of traveling wherever our hearts desire, without obsessing over the price tag. The past few months have been a whirlwind of adventures, but as the school year resumes, we’ll savor more time at home. That said, we’re already planning several exciting trips over the next six months.
As summer winds down, I’m reflecting on another fulfilling year of early retirement. This August marks 12 years since I stepped away from my engineering career in 2013, a career that spanned just nine years. It’s remarkable to think that my retirement has outlasted my working years. Over these 12 years, we’ve watched our net worth triple, explored dozens of countries with our children, and celebrated as two of them graduated college. Our kids are thriving, and I’m filled with gratitude for the journey.
Here’s to many more decades of retirement filled with the freedom to “do nothing” in the most delightful way possible while embracing whatever adventures come next!
Okay folks, that’s it for me for this update!
Ready for fall to arrive? Did you have a good summer?
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Wonderful update as always!
What a great post. Isn’t it wild how you can save $195 by walking 10 min!!! I used your referral link for a chase card. Going to Bolivia to photograph jaguars and other mammals. Using points for a lot of flights, however the jaguar and flights from Bolivia to Ecuador – just gotta pay the price. I’ll be getting that flight basically “free” via the rewards bonus. Thanks for a great update as always.
Thanks for using the link! Enjoy the trip!
Thanks for another update; I truly appreciate these! I also like your new slideshow widget/format, so if that’s not too much trouble to add for future posts, I’d stick with it. Nice work!
thanks for the feedback. Looks pretty good I think too
Slide show is okay…but some of the text is missing. And it drives me crazy to see only half of a sentence! I’m sure there is a way to fix that?
I’ll see what I can do. either fix it or write shorter sentences ha ha ha
Great update as always. I always enjoy the lovely animal photos. I agree with Ann that I’d like to see the full text in the slideshow widget.
I don’t know if I’d read this detail before, but you do not reinvest any dividends?
I reinvest the dividends in the 401k and IRAs. In the taxable account I just spend them. So of the $5,000 or whatever in dividends I get in some months, I am not necessarily collecting all those as cash in my checking account. Some remain in 401k/IRA and do get reinvested (mostly automatically)
That’s interesting. I didn’t think about that. Thanks for the clarification!
Can you separate out pre tax dividends vs post tax dividends? 401k and IRA dividends don’t really count as income because they aren’t taxed and that is misleading your readers.
I have a 457 account so I could easily pull out the IRA dividends in a roundabout way (just pay tax, no penalty). I just don’t need them and don’t want to pay tax so I reinvest them. Also can pull the Roth IRA dividends at any point because I have a lot of contributions and conversions that allow tax free, penalty free withdrawals. Can you explain what you mean by “it’s misleading”? I don’t pay tax on these dividends (some of which are roth divs so tax free anyway) and choose to reinvest for cash flow purposes.
Enjoyed this update as always, thank you! I like the slideshow format can you tell us what app you’re using for that?
I love reading what you do, but can never understand how the travel using points works so well for you. I get solicitations for new cards all the time most are offering high points but you must spend $4,000 or $5,000 in three or four months to get those points. With your frugal spending I’m not sure how that would be possible. So therefore I’m guessing you have many points built up over previous years is this correct? I checked flights for 2 round trip to London from Raleigh for next June (July not available yet) and the lowest price I could see was $2,160. Seems like a very good price but it would take many many points to reduce that cost to $125 if I remember what you said your cost was.
I have seen that your consulting income has been reduced I would suggest that you offer some specific consulting just on travel and points, it would be a great value.
All the best to much respect! 😎
I end up “spending” on stuff here and there that isn’t reflected in my monthly reports because it’s either reimbursed (like paying the property tax bill for my parents for example). More recently, I made a deposit for a new bank account and they let me charge $3,000 to make the initial deposit without assessing a fee up front. So that’s half of the required spending right there.
Your flight price to london just over $1k sounds about right. Summertime flights are expensive. In contrast, I just checked on flights using Jetblue points from Raleigh in springtime and it’s closer to $350-400 worth of points plus the $125 or so in taxes per ticket. Off season travel is a lot cheaper.
What bank(s) allow you to make deposits via credit card? Also, I believe the CC needs to categorize the charge correctly and not mark it as a cash advance to get points.
US Bank for one allows $250 on personal checking accounts and $3000 on biz checking accounts. It categorized as a purchase for our capital one card. Doctor of Credit website has hundreds of datapoints of various banks that allow CC funding and the specific CC card issuers treatment of those bank fundings (whether they were purchase or cash advance).
As far as the app for the slide show, I believe it is native to the WordPress blog software that I use. Or maybe it is part of the Jetpack plugin? I plead ignorance, as I just saw the “gallery” feature in the image posting module and gave it a shot, and looks okay other than issues with the text not wrapping properly on long captions.
It’s a jetpack slideshow.
Thanks – that makes sense. I have Jetpack installed and guess I just never used the feature since they implemented it.
Lovely and motivating to hear from you each month, Justin! What you accomplish amazes me; thanks for sharing it with us!
Thanks for the kind words!
What a great month! How many countries have you guys traveled to?
I just updated this recently and think it’s 44 countries now. Next month we have another big cruise that will add several more European countries too. Never was really a goal to visit 50 countries or 100 countries or whatever but we are well on the way. Just trying to visit different places right now.
Thanks for the update again, Dover is my neck of the woods, only 10 mins from where I live. If I’d have known you were there I would have offered to buy you a quick coffee.
Did you always plan to wait until you had enough to only spend the dividends from your investments?
When you were in savings mode, did you have an overall figure that you wanted to achieve before stopping work? And then was the plan to just collect the dividends to preserve capital or just figure out withdrawals/income management as you went along?
Was this planned out prior to retirement?
I might have taken you up on it! We were there in Dover in June too, but I was half zombie on that trip because we had just arrived from the overnight flight from the USA and had just a couple hours sleep 🙂
I didn’t really plan on limiting spending to dividends only. It’s kind of worked out that way but mainly because I end up making 20-25k from other little side hustles each year.
When I first started saving, I had a plan to save roughly $1.25 million and that would give me the $40000 per year while withdrawing 3.25% per year. So I’d spend the dividends and then need another 1-2% of dipping into the principle as well.
Thanks for the reply.
The withdrawal plan sounds good and sticking to the Simple path to wealth thinking.
Sorry Justin but there are just too many ads on your blog. I like to read on mobile and I had to skim. Looks like you are still doing well and enjoying the lifestyle from what little I could see LOL
@EscapeVelocity if you use ad-blocking software, available for most every widely-used mobile browsers, you won’t see any ads.
@EscapeVelocity, I use the Firefox mobile browser. There’s a button on the right of the address bar that will strip everything away besides the plain text. It makes reading blogs like this very easy.
That’s very impressive blog income!
As for us, our grocery bill continues to increase because of the tariff tax.
The tariff tax has been the tide that is lifting all prices across the board — not only affecting physical goods but also services. Companies seem to be taking advantage of this and upping their prices even though they don’t have to.
Case and point: we just got our Waste Management bill (for trash pickup) and see a 20% increase! That’s pretty insane.
I don’t know if I’ve seen many tariff price hikes yet but I fully expect them. I’ve also been out of the country about half the time since the inauguration so I am a bit out of touch with prices in the USA. Groceries don’t seem too bad so far. Mostly select items like beef are up for me. But I just saw Playstation 5’s went up by $50 each due to tariffs. Not fun if you’re in the market for imported electronics (which ones aren’t imported, right?).
Update 8/28/2025: I went to the grocery store and saw several prices increased versus about a month ago when I last went to the grocery store. Tariff related or just background inflation? Who knows. Bread and produce in this case went up.
Great update! Always fun to see where your travels have taken you and your family. Crazy that your girls have both graduated college…congrats to them! How did your middle daughter graduate by age 18. I remember reading taking college level courses in HS or something but 4 years early is a pretty amazing accomplishment. Good for her! Does she regret “missing out” on the college experience…whatever that is?
Great blog as always!!
Would you be able to break down exactly what you did in London whilst you were there and the cost? I have lived and worked in and around London my whole life and just getting the train from outside of zone 5 is at least £40 for one person. If you get in a black cab you are spending a minimum of £10 and Uber is not dissimilar. Fish and chips for one will.be around £10 to £15 and a pint is at least £7.
I’d be interested to understand what you actually did whilst you were there and maybe get some tips how to do things more cheaply!!
We were only in London for the day.
Train – if you mean the Heathrow to downtown train, we took the Underground (Picadilly line) and it maxes at 5.80 GBP from zone 6 to zone 1. And shorter Zone 1/2 metro rides were 2.80GBP each. There’s a max of 16GBP a day for transit for zones 1-6 and I think we were just under at 14GBP each. The next day we took a bus to the train station from our Hyde Park hotel (1.80GBP I think).
The train from downtown to Dover UK was 14 to 18GBP each advance purchase each way. 40GBP is the walk up price if you don’t buy ahead of time (if that’s what you’re referring to). We skipped the Elizabeth Line train for 14GBP and the Heathrow Express (25GBP??) just because there wasn’t much of a time savings according to Google Maps and it would lead to an extra transfer vs the Picadilly Line metro.
Uber – never took it in London but yes it looked expensive.
Fish and chips – we went to JD Wetherspoon near Leadenhall Market. I think it was 9 GBP for their 2 to 5 pm “happy hour” special for a large fish and chips and mushy peas that included a pint beer. Got a 2nd pint for another 3GBP then we shared the large fish and chips (I wasn’t super hungry). Ate at a KFC later for 6GBP and we had some snacks we packed from home. Free breakfast at hotel.
Museums/attractions – I skipped all the 25-30GBP admission places. We just didn’t have time/energy to do everything so stuck with several free things. British Museum being the biggest one. And lots of walking around, seeing the landmarks on foot (google maps is my friend!). Tower bridge, Tower of London but didn’t pay to go into either of those just walked around the outside. Leadenhall market walkthrough, St Paul’s Cathedral (just walked around outside).
So to summarize – we walked a lot, took transit, and split a plate at JD Wetherspoons! I read some disparaging remarks about “the ‘Spoon” online so I don’t know if we just ate at the worst British chain restaurant ever or what but I thought the fish and chips was pretty good by American standards and the beer is beer of course!
Where we stayed in Hyde Park, I took a quick look at normal restaurants and they were all Italian/Asian/Foreign food and not british food. And like 3.9 stars and $20-25 per plate. My guess is these are tourist prices and tourist quality. Gave those a pass. We were also about to board a 14 night floating buffet and eat a ton so I wasn’t too interested in eating a lot in London unless it was exceptional. The fish n chips were a “gotta get this while in England” kind of thing and definitely worth the price. 9GBP or $12 USD is a great price for fried fish with a beer in the US at a sit down restaurant. Not sure if I could find that locally because alcohol is so expensive at restaurants here.
Thanks for the reply and breakdown. Wow! That is certainly a cheap price from Dover. Just to get to work in rush hour from where I live, which is closer than Dover, is £60! The tube is definitely the best way to travel.
You experianced Spoons! Ha! It is a british institution! It certainly is cheap and to be fair sometimes their food is OK. The foodie and craft beer/gin scene in London is amazing. There are loads of independent pop up style restaurants, artisan style bakeries and craft breweries/gin distilleries. But you do pay for it.
We’ll be back in the future at some point but the Spoons was a great experience for a foreigner. And we also went to one on our previous trip to Greenock, Scotland (the port for Glasgow) and their beer was super cheap. Didn’t have too much time or energy to explore further out, but that mid-day spoons in London was a nice quiet retreat. Got a nice back room mostly to ourselves overlooking a quiet courtyard probably 500+ years old. For about the price of a fast food combo meal back home!
Sounds like a great trip!
Have you ever tried renting bikes to get around european cities? Its been our favorite affordable way to tour them. You cover way more ground than walking and better experience the sights, sounds, smells and feel of a neighborhood more than subways/ubers plus the added exercise bonus.
Idk about London, but in many other cities you can get bikes for around 10eur/day either through the bike shares or if you rent by the week if you’re slow traveling. For short trips across the city of 5km or less, its often faster than walking to public transit, waiting for the next train/bus, taking it with all the stops, then walking to destination.
I like to use a handful of bike apps that help you avoid the busy streets and just zig zag through quiet streets until you see something interesting/cool and stop. A lot of times we’ve spontaneously found mini festivals, parties in parks/streets, fun non-touristy bars that seemingly only the locals knew about that you couldn’t find in a guide book or google search.
I know you only had a short time in London so bike rentals might’ve been a hassle but consider it the next time you slow travel in europe.
Oddly enough I have never rented bikes overseas. I agree it’s a great way to get around. When we’re slow traveling we’re usually spending more time in a specific part of the city so we aren’t typically walking a long ways or taking a lot of transit or ubers. More like head to a certain district (uber/transit there and back) and then just explore that little part of town. Rinse/repeat for a different section of the city each day for a week. Or we’re out in the countryside where a car is a better choice than bike many times (riding bikes on narrow roads with blind curves scares me, even in bike-friendly Europe!).
I’d really like to rent a bike for a day or several days in somewhere like Rotterdam or a smaller city in Netherlands. Where it’s very bike friendly and also flat. 🙂 Didn’t manage to make that happen on our handful of visits to the Netherlands this year just due to timing and doing other things while there. But that’s a potential future trip I hope!
The algorithm that the “Cyclers” app is pretty powerful at turning almost any city into a flat bike friendly city like Rotterdam. I live in a fairly car dependent area and after I stared using it, I might only see 1-2 cars on hour long bike rides.
Their free version has some decent features like you can ask it for a 12 mile loop thats as flat and traffic free as possible or point to point bike friendly directions that are much flatter and lower traffic than google maps directions. Its a nice way to discover parts of your city that are off the beaten path that google maps takes you on.
I find it so useful it so much that I paid up for their $80 version that has a lot more customization.
Interesting to know. I’m downloading the app now and will check it out. I was thinking of biking around during the cruise we just got home from. Not sure if I’d like it as much as just walking around the old city parts. I guess if we got more suburban then it would make more sense.
She has an August birthday so was one of the youngest in her year at school. Then she graduated a year early from HS (while co-enrolled in Community College her last yr of HS). Then did summer classes and took an extra class each semester too. Plus a few APs during high school.
I’m not sure how much missing out she did. She attended regular 4 yr university for 3 semesters (including summer session) but lived at home. She’s not too outgoing but made friends, hung out with them, etc. She just got a job so I assume she’ll have young-ish coworkers to hang out with if she wants once the job starts. It’s hard to know how the alternate reality of the classic “4 years in the dorms or campus apartment” would have played out. Maybe more friends/social stuff? Looking back at my college days, I got pretty wrapped up with academics after the first year so didn’t do a lot of the “traditional” college stuff. But did a lot of extracurriculars/jobs/clubs etc.
I love the updates, I remember shortly after you started your blog I realized the extreme frugality was just not for me and now I am facing the fact that if I had buckled down I would be retired by now too haha. Congrats on the eldest getting a job that’s big and you clearly passed on a strong work ethic.
Thanks – she’s glad to be employed right now!
As for saving early – it’s all about tradeoffs. I’m sure we missed out on some stuff early on but it’s paying off today (well, and the last 12 years too I suppose!).
I was on the simple path, amassed 1.4M in a brokerage account besides 300k in 401k.
Guess what? I was sued due to a car crash and my ENTIRE brokerage was wiped out from me.
All the years I suffered postponing gratification gone to a big scam called injure law firms.
Don’t follow FIRE. Enjoy life because you might lose everything in blink of an eye and the only thing you can think then is killing yourself.
and b4 anyone ask, no I didn’t know what unbrella insurance was
Sorry to hear but that shouldn’t stop anyone from following FIRE. Like you said, umbrella insurance and high liabilities on auto insurance could’ve prevented this and are very important for anyone with a significant amount of money outside retirement accounts.
But no one should postpone gratification for FIRE. Build the life you want and then save any leftover for it. It sounds like maybe you weren’t building the life you want.
That’s a tough break. I always knew my brokerage account was at risk but hoped that my retirement accounts would survive if I ever faced a huge judgment like that.
Wonderful. I’ve been following you ever since your first post back in 2013. What a progress? I need a post that talks fully about how you funded your kids education including total cost, how much you saved in 529 plan if any etc. This will be of great help to plan the expenses, learn scholarship possibility etc
Sounds like a great idea!
Basically we were low enough income on paper that the kids got a lot of financial aid from filling out the FAFSA. That plus community college helped a lot. And living at home.
Thank you Justin. Could you share details on what is the exact number you had in your 529 plan for both your daughters? We’re in planning stage and this insight will help
did you use all funds in 529 (or) is there something left behind that you’d be rolling over to Roth in coming days?
I see your post before 12 years and see you had 529 plan and not UTMA (or) some other form of account to support kids education. Can you talk a little bit more on that?
I believe we had a collective total of $90k in the kids’ 529s. The plan was always to have about 4 years of tuition in the 529 and we came really close (that would have been $36k x 3 = $108k, so we were just short). But as it turned out we have $77k left over. The market has continued to go up a ton during these 3-4 years of college so that contributed as well. Eventually we’ll have one more kid to go through college but hopefully he gets decent FAFSA money too. If we still have $ leftover, then we could do the Roth contributions as you mentioned.
the kids each had/have a UTMA but the plan wasn’t to use that for college unless they needed extra funds. As it turned out they did not.
Thats wonderful. So my understanding is that kids stayed home, got FASFA scholarship so that you pulled out the money from 529 to match up the scholarship money. The average instate tuition is roughly $10K/annum so that’s about $36K per kid
What a planning? Beautiful
You’re an inspiration as always
529 withdrawals were somewhat limited because some of the FAFSA money was spent on the qualified education expenses, which meant I couldn’t “double dip” and also reimburse the same expenses from the 529. I don’t know if the IRS really checks that stuff (seems very complicated!) but I did my best to spreadsheet all the expenses out and reimburse only those qualified expenses that were not paid by FAFSA funds.
Yes, I agree with LearnersReference!
I’ve got 2 high school age kids and am pretty worried about college costs, but we want to retire early ASAP.
How did you get free cruise?
There was a thing called the “Casino Status Match Free Cruise Merry Go Round” in 2023 and 2024 that got me a ton of free cruises. I’m still riding that wave but it might be ending soon. I understand it’s hard to get started on the free cruise merry go round in 2025 due to lots of changes in the credit cards and statuses from those cards.
I’m also using a lot of Chase Ultimate Reward points at a 1.5x redemption rate to pay the taxes+fees on these “free” cruises from the various cruise line casino departments, or booking the cruises fully using Chase Ultimate Reward points through the Chase Travel portal.