Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! Fall is in full swing here, with the leaves shifting from green to various hues of yellow, orange, and red. The mornings are cool and crisp and the afternoons pleasantly mild and sunny. It’s a great time to enjoy the outdoors since the summertime heat, humidity, and bugs are completely gone.
Even though we don’t have any travel planned for this fall, I’ve been busy researching and planning future trips in my free time. Our next big trip in about a month will take us to South America onboard a cruise from Miami during Christmas break. And after that, we hope to do a couple of smaller trips in the spring before we spend the whole summer of 2024 in Poland. Busy times!
On to our financial progress. October was a mixed month for our finances. Our net worth dropped by $22,000 to end October at $2,683,000. Our income totaled $2,663, while our spending was a rather modest $1,513 for the month of October.
Let’s jump into the details from last month.
Income
Investment income totaled $1,452 in October. Our equity index funds and ETFs pay dividends quarterly at the end of March, June, September, and December. Some funds paid their dividends in the first few days of October. As a result, we had a larger than normal amount of investment income last month. Here’s more on our dividend investments.
Blog income totaled $486 for the month. This is the “new normal” for blog income since I only post on here about once per month.
My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) dropped to $0 in October. Things are slowing down I guess.
Tradeline sales income totaled $0 in October. Another month without tradeline revenue. However, I just got three new sales during October but won’t receive payment for those until November or December. 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 October, my “deposit income” totaled $724. Out of this total, $17 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 $25 purchase through Rakuten, you’ll get a $10 sign up bonus.
The other $707 in deposit income came from a class action settlement from Capital One. They got hacked; my data was leaked to the dark web. I collect a fat paycheck. Seems fair enough. This is the largest class action settlement I’ve ever received. As far as I know, I haven’t had any identity theft issues, and this isn’t the first time my data has been compromised. First time I got paid this much though!
Youtube income was $0 in October. Youtube only pays out when you hit $100 in accumulated revenue. Recently, my Youtube earnings have been about $50 per month on average, so I only get paid every other month. I just checked my channel stats and realized that I crossed $10,000 in lifetime earnings a few months ago. Pretty wild!
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!).
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 five 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 October expenses:
In total, we spent $1,513 during October which is almost two thousand dollars less than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Groceries and utilities were the two highest categories of spending in October. After spending over $12,000 in September when we bought our new (used) car, this past month’s modest spending is a nice change of pace.
Detailed breakdown of spending:
Groceries – $728:
Groceries were a little lower than recent months. Fortunately, food prices seem to be leveling off after a couple of years of routine price hikes at the grocery store. I think it’s too early to say that our grocery spending is declining long term, but it’s nice to see a lower number like this once in a while.
Utilities – $269:
We spent $147 on our water/sewer/trash bill.
The natural gas bill, which provides heating and hot water, totaled $24 for last month.
The electricity bill totaled $97 in October.
Since the weather was mild in September and the beginning of October, our gas and electric bills moderated accordingly. We used the air conditioning a little bit last month but not much. Therefore out utility expense was lower than normal.
Gifts – $200:
We started more serious Christmas shopping in October and picked up a few things.
Automotive – $171:
During October, we paid the property tax bill and annual registration/license fee for our new (to us) car that we bought during September. The consolidated tax and registration totaled $126. Thankfully, the assessed value is less than what we actually paid for the car so we save a small amount on the annual tax bill.
The other automotive expense came from a $45 upcharge to add our new car to our insurance policy. That covers almost three months of the remaining policy period. That means we’ll pay just under $200 per year in additional insurance costs due to the addition of the new car. Not too bad I guess?
Gas – $53:
A half tank for each of our cars. The new car is more fuel efficient so we should spend a little less on gas in the future.
Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $47:
Our current 2023 health insurance costs $18 per month, thanks to very generous Affordable Care Act subsidies that we receive due to our low ~$45,000 per year Adjusted Gross Income.
Our 2023 dental insurance plans cost a total of $29 in premiums per month.
I chose a very basic plan for $9 per month for me that covers most preventive care but no fillings. Mrs. Root of Good has a different set of dental needs than I do so we kept the more comprehensive $20 per month plan for her (same as 2022’s plan).
By buying insurance, we should save a couple hundred dollars on my dental care. For Mrs. Root of Good, we will end up saving a net amount of $63 compared to paying cash for the preventive dentist visits throughout the year.
Restaurants – $27:
We got a family box of fried chicken from Bojangles last month. I had a $10 off coupon, so how could I refuse?
Home Maintenance – $22:
I got handy and did a couple of DIY tasks during October. I spent $6 for a new electrical junction box and light fixture and upgraded an old dysfunctional fluorescent tube light above our kitchen sink. The light hasn’t worked properly for the 20 years that we’ve owned this house, so I decided it was time to fix it. It was a pain in the butt however the end result works well. And next time the lightbulb burns out I can swap it out with a regular $1 LED bulb instead of needing a special tube lightbulb.
The other $16 in home maintenance costs came from some drainpipe I installed on the gutter downspout in the front of our house. This upgrade will help keep rainwater from ponding next to our house during the next monsoon.
Travel – $0:
I didn’t have any net travel expenses during October, but I did rebook a couple of flights to shave off the cost in airline miles.
I also wanted to take a minute to highlight a few temporarily increased credit card offers that I’ve taken advantage of recently for tons of free travel.
Get free travel like us
If you are interested in getting free travel from your credit card like I do, consider the Chase Ink Unlimited or Chase Ink Cash business cards (my referral link). Right now, for a limited time, the Chase Ink business cards offer an eye-popping 90,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points that can be redeemed instantly for $900 in cash. Mrs. Root of Good just picked up another new Chase Ink card this month, and I just got my new Ink card last month. The bonuses keep on rolling in the door!
I am guessing the 90,000 point sign up bonus will only last for a few more weeks, so sign up now if you want the higher bonus amount.
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. Or 1.25x value by reimbursing myself for groceries. That turns the 90,000 points into $1,350 of free travel or $1,125 of free groceries. Or I can transfer those Ultimate rewards points to over a dozen travel partners’ airline/hotel programs like United, Southwest, or Hyatt. I am about to book a $350 per night hotel in Florida for 9,000 Hyatt/Ultimate Reward points, for example.
Southwest Companion Pass deal – time to act now!
I also picked up a pair of Chase Southwest cards during the first part of November. My goal is to receive the sign up bonuses in the first part of January 2024, and thereby earn a Southwest Companion pass that will be valid through December 2025. The Companion Pass is valid for the year you earn it plus the following calendar year.
The Companion Pass basically grants a free flight for your companion when you book flights for yourself (with points OR with cash). This means Mrs. Root of Good is flying free on Southwest for all of 2024 and 2025!
Both Southwest cards pay a higher than normal sign up bonus right now, so it’s easy to qualify for the Southwest Companion Pass. Just remember to NOT complete the spending requirement until after January 1st of 2024 or you’ll miss out on a whole year of Companion Pass benefits.
Note that these cards have an annual fee (but they offer a lot of free points each cardmember anniversary so it offsets about half the annual fee). And you can apply for both cards on the same day if you want.
Referral links if you’re interested:
Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business card – 80,000 SW miles ($199 annual fee) – select the “Performance business” card option
Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Plus card – 75,000 SW miles ($69 annual fee)
For $268 in annual fees, we’ll get ~160,000 SW miles, and the Companion Pass that offers buy-one-get-one-free Southwest flights for 2 years. Just pay taxes on the free ticket (usually $5.60 per one way segment in the USA). That’s about $4,000 worth of free flights for the two of us.
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”.
Year to Date Spending – 2023
We spent $31,756 during the first ten months of 2023. This annual spending is about $1,500 less than the $33,333 we budgeted for ten months of spending in our $40,000 annual early retirement budget.
It turns out that our new car purchase didn’t throw our annual spending off by very much. We’re still running a small budget surplus with only two months of spending remaining in the year.
We don’t have any more travel planned for 2023 other than our cruise in December. So the rest of the year will be pretty low expense unless a big surprise pops up unexpectedly.
Monthly Expense Summary for 2023:
- January – $3,423
- February – $1,675
- March – $1,679
- April – $1,566
- May – $2,976
- June – $1,536
- July – $2,064
- August – $2,615
- September – $12,714 (we bought a new used car)
- October – $1,513
Summary of annual spending from all ten 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 – $29,449
- 2023 – $31,756 (Year to Date through October 31, 2023)
Net Worth: $2,683,000 (-$22,000)
Our net worth dropped by $22,000 to end October at $2,683,000. We seem to be on a downward trajectory, but I know it’ll eventually turn around.
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
Relaxation mode continued throughout October. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and planning and enjoying our daily walks. And a long walk or bike ride on most Fridays while our daughter is in her college class (we still have to drive her to school).
I’m itching to do some traveling, and fortunately we have a great trip coming up in about a month. We set sail from Miami, visit a few islands in the Caribbean, then head to South America and Central America for a few days before returning back to the USA. Highlights include Cartagena, Colombia and the Panama Canal (visiting, not sailing through it).
On Christmas Day, we will be docked at an island about thirty miles off the coast of Honduras. This will be the kids’ longest cruise, so hopefully they have a good time.
Okay folks, that’s it for me this month. See you next time!
Enjoying fall? Ready for winter?
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Isn’t visiting Europe changing for Americans next year? Visa requirements? Are you not concerned about what is going on in that part of the world (Poland)? Thanks and I enjoy your updates.
It’s not going into effect until 2025. Also, it’s not a visa requirement. It’s an online travel authorization good for 3 years. And nothing is going on in Poland….do you mean Ukraine/Russia?
Yeah, I think it costs $7-8 and it’s good for multiple entries like you say. Just another checkbox with minimal cost, fortunately. Some countries have very expensive entry or exit taxes, or expensive visas that you must obtain ahead of time. Fortunately the EU entry authorization is easy and cheap.
Curious what concerns you have about Poland? The recent election? The war in Ukraine? Not worried about either one, as the country seems like one of the nicer places with the least civil unrest and disruptions in all of Europe. And the front in Ukraine is about 500 miles from the nearest point where we’ll be, so it’s very unlikely anything crosses into Poland by accident. I suppose WW3 could break out while we’re there but I would take my chances in Poland and try to get out of there if it made sense. Mostly staying in the center, west, and north of the country however.
I have long been a reader and fan of your blog. I must admit that I read your blog each month and just am in awe with your spending levels and travels.
Thank you for sharing your life’s experiences.
DJ
Ditto!
Thanks, DJ!
Can you do some cheaper consults? Some $$ is better than no money! Like 100.00 or 120.00? Interested in getting 1.Ty, Kimmy
Maybe some day. For now I’m keeping rates where they are at. Just don’t want to be too busy like I was several years ago.
Fall is beautiful all over the country, such an amazing time of year. How cool deer are in your backyard, and love those trails. I must disagree though that food tastes better at home for us, there are just so many good restaurants in our area!
I do like restaurant food too, but it’s lost its magic over the years for the things that we can replicate at home.
Did Google like majorly nerf your traffic or something? I wonder if the consulting income being down is related to the blog income being down. $500/month isn’t too shabby though.
I received the Capital one class action payout also, i was shocked that it was that high. I also feel like I did a ton of bank bonuses these past couple months. Still haven’t pulled the trigger on a Chase Ink…
My traffic has been on a slow decline since I post a lot less. Just part of being lazy 🙂 And yes, I can imagine the consulting income declines along with reduction in overall traffic.
Hi from Munich, Germany! I can’t see any pictures, both in chrome on my desktop and android. Just wanted to let you know.
Thanks for the great content over the years 🙂
Cheers!
That’s weird, and I am able to replicate the error when I turn on my VPN and set it to Netherlands. I don’t really know why it’s happening, but maybe something to do with being in the EU? It works from elsewhere overseas (like in Japan, when I change my VPN to there, or whenever we travel elsewhere overseas). I wonder if you are on a VPN or a private network?
I’m in the UK and haven’t been able to see photos either for the last several months. At one point I was seeing maybe 25% of them, but nothing now. Not using a VPN and it’s the same on both home and public networks, with Firefox or Chrome. Other US based blogs are fine. Maybe your hosting provider can shed some light on why it’s happening?
Thanks for letting me know. I’ll definitely look into it. The pics are hosted by an accelerator to make the pics load faster for all. But obviously it’s not making it faster for half the world that can’t see the images at all!
I am from India and I can’t see the pictures either. I could see them a few months back (probably early 2023) when I last visited.
Nice month. A couple of things.
–>enjoy the outdoors???? No way, anything below 50F is goddam freezing for me and I won’t go outside. Love 90-105 is my perfect temp.
–>I noticed that strangely some ETFs paid dividends late past quarter (ITOT, IJR, VTI). It screwed my cashflow plans. And in December it happens again w/ cap gains being thrown in
–>My PC/Empower is not computing my dividend income for some ETFs (ITOT, JPST) in my cashflow>Income chart. Is it happening to you or some else as well?
Thanks a ton!
90-105F = omg I am dying, give me my AC! ha ha ha
I’m sure you’ve talked about this before, but maybe not recently. Since Mrs. RoG fully retired *where* does the money you spend come from? Some of your investment income is in tax sheltered accounts that you may or may not want to take out just because it was earned. A related question is whether you are doing Roth conversions to fill up your low tax bracket.
Maybe this is an idea for a blog post.
Sources of income – it’s in these monthly updates. A couple thousand per month on average from this blog, consulting, tradelines, random sign up bonuses for banks/credit cards. Plus dividends and the occasional sale of some investments (from taxable accounts). I haven’t had to pull anything from retirement accounts yet.
And I do Roth conversions almost every year to take advantage of the low tax brackets like you say.
Question:
Don’t the credit cards you get points from require $6,000-$10,000 spending in the first 3 months. How do you do that in your budget?
It really depends on the credit card. Some are as little as $1 (2 American Airlines cards we just got), while others are modest $1000-3000 spending requirements. And yes, some have higher requirements for 6-15k spending.
I try to sneak in extra spending wherever I can. For example I paid my parents’ insurance and property tax bill this year which totaled almost $7k. I’ll also pay a bit extra on my estimated taxes and get a refund for that. And then we have tuition payments for our kids’ college, which end up getting reimbursed by financial aid. So it’s not really “spending” that hits my budget, but it’s spending that helps me hit a new credit card sign up bonus.
Interesting! I had no idea that college tuition had you place a deposit and then they send you a refund
That’s a lot of persimmons? Did you dry any of them?
No, we didn’t dry any. Just ate a couple per day as they ripen up. We are down to just a few remaining as we approach the end of November.
Can you share screenshot of $10,000 income from youtube analytics lifetime earnings in next post(or) edit current one and have that included here
Here’s a link to my Twitter account where I shared the $10k lifetime earnings screen cap: https://twitter.com/RootofGoodBlog/status/1724171910974480689
Thank you. I’d recommend including the screenshots in blogpost as i usually read your website not any other social medium 🙂
Have any of your college bound kids looked into any of the CSS private schools? Some offer not only free tuition but also free room and board for those with incomes under $60-$75k if you can get in. It might even be cheaper than going to in state public universities.
Yes, but the CSS looks at other assets such as houses and retirement accounts I believe. So they would (correctly) figure out that we don’t, in fact, need financial aid. Unlike the FAFSA, which makes it look like we are deeply in need of financial aid.
I’ve played with a few of the calculators provided by the more competitive private schools and have had mixed results with similar NW but slightly higher income than you. Some have said they’d charge near full price, while others have said 90-95% discount including room and board such as from Cornell. Anecdotally, I’ve heard that some children of other early retirees have received Full Scholarship offers to CSS schools like Rice. From what I’ve heard many CSS they still ignore assets in home and those held in retirement accounts beyond a certain limit (potentially in the $5+ million range depending on the school).
It might be worth checking into and seeing what happens if your kids can get in and wants to go that route.
The kids are struggling enough with submitting applications to a few local state U’s. I don’t think their ambitions extend to applying to several name brand private schools too.
The other problem is the typically horrible transfer credits the name brand private schools accept. 2 years of APs and transfer credits might become worthless. Which means a 2 year bachelors becomes a 4 year program. This would be the case at Harvard and Duke, from my research. Even if name brand school were free, I don’t think it makes sense to spend 2 more years to get one of those degrees (vs getting a master’s in the same or less time).
I see where you’re coming from, that makes a lot of sense. The state universities are great if you want to stay local long term and/or might consider grad school.
I don’t know about transfer credits, but maybe a private school that is a notch or two below Duke like Drexel or Lehigh could be another option to consider if they offer a near full ride and take most of their transfer credits. If they’re willing to go a couple states away, there’s a ton of similar caliber schools in the Northeast that give out lots of scholarships to those with low EFC/SAI.
Also Elon University near you
Also, along the lines of motivation for sending in applications. Have you ever thought of giving financial incentives to them to sign up for more?
The reason I ask is when I was applying to grad school, I was deadest on going to 2-3 target schools and then randomly applied to another decent school that I had less interest in and unexpectedly got a full ride scholarship when the other schools didn’t give me anything. It really gave me a head start towards FI compared to if I started in a deep hole of student loans. I plan on giving my kids extra $ incentives to cast a wide net to apply to a bunch, since you never know what the admissions and financial aid offices might offer.
At this point they are pretty much done with applying to schools. Roughly 1 more year to go for each of them. The generous need-based aid covers all tuition/fees and books, with a decent surplus refunded to the kids. I suppose some places (possibly lower tier schools) would have given them a full ride in theory, but they decided to take the simple route with inexpensive state schools.
Look forward to hearing about the cruise! We are also taking a cruise out of Miami in December, but we are just going to the Bahamas for 3 days. It’s a dry run for our Alaskan Cruise in June 2024, just to see if we like it. We’ve only been on one other cruise and it was 15+ years ago, so we need to re-aclimate ourselves with the process. Safe travels!
Enjoy your cruise! It should be fun but a little hectic getting on and off the boat for such a short period of time. Still nice to get away to the beautiful Bahamas for a couple of days!
Do you allocate anything to alternative assets? In allocation to crypto like 25 BPS to it?
Zero crypto. No plans to get any either. I do have 11% allocated to REITs but they are all in a publicly traded index fund (VNQ and VNQI).
Do you have an update for your asset allocation?
Pretty much the same 90/10 stocks/bonds that I’ve been for a long time.
Thanks. And in stocks mostly US or equal US/Int?
Are you going to add any bitcoin now that it’s an etf /s haha.
50/50 US/intl split
No plans to ever add any bitcon to my portfolio. I just don’t see the role it would play. I’d probably add gold before I would add bitcon, but also consider gold to be a mostly worthless asset class just because it doesn’t produce anything. I’d go with something boring like a utilities ETF or a farmland/timber/nat resource ETF before any gold/bitcon of course!! But I don’t have any plans to change away from fairly broadly diversified, non-industry specific ETFs. Other than my 11% allocation to REITs.