Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! We are back home in Raleigh after spending most of the month on a cruise through the Panama Canal. As a result this monthly update is almost a month late. Better late than never, I suppose.
After being very busy traveling throughout 2025, we are finally home for a long period of time. So far, we have nothing planned for more than two months. The plan is to stick around Raleigh during Thanksgiving and Christmas to celebrate with our extended families. I’m also hoping to work on a few deferred maintenance projects around the house. Never fear, I also have a list of fun “deferred hobbies” that I have neglected for much of the past year.
Our older two kids are busy with their full time jobs while our son is almost half way through his last year of middle school. Since we are home for two months straight, we’ll have a lot more time to spend with the kids as well.
On to our financial progress. October was another great month for our finances. Our net worth increased by $23,000 to end the month at $3,850,000. Our October income of $3,943 was way more than enough to cover our spending of $2,003 for the month.
Let’s jump into the details from last month.
Income
Investment income totaled $1,458 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 in the early days of October as the payments flowed in. Here’s more on our dividend investments.
Blog income totaled $1,114 for last month. This represents above average blog income. A couple of affiliate advertising links paid off well last month but it’s mostly a one-time thing.
My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $213 during last month. That represents one hour of consulting. After a very slow summer season of basically zero consulting income, it looks like I’m back to a low but consistent level of consulting income right now.
Tradeline sales income totaled $700 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. 2025 is on the path to exceed the $6,000 mark.
My “deposit income” totaled $11. 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 $444 last month. This bonus money came from the Chase Sapphire Reserve Pay Yourself Back feature where I reimburse myself for grocery purchases paid for with my Sapphire Reserve card.
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.
Pics from our visit to Tallinn, Estonia in October:
Expenses
Now let’s take a look at October expenses:
In total, we spent $2,003 last month which is about $1,300 less than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Utilities and general merchandise were the top two spending categories from last month.
Detailed breakdown of spending:
Utilities – $513:
We spent $145 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month.
I paid two months of electric bills in October which totaled $310. The September bill included a lot of air conditioner usage. However, the October electric bill dropped quite a bit now that we are in the winter heating season.
The natural gas bill for last month and this month totaled $58. I paid two bills in October since we were out of town for most of November. We’re in the winter heating season now, so we’ll be using a lot more natural gas going forward.
General Merchandise – $477:
I usually let small random non-food “thing” purchases at Walmart or Amazon get lumped into the “grocery” category (out of laziness) but I broke out a few charges this month to the “general merchandise category.
The big news is that I bought a new bike! My old bike was stolen a couple of years ago. I bought a different “new” bike about a year ago, then decided I didn’t like it so I sold it for a profit. I’ve been busy traveling the last year and haven’t found much time to devote to bike shopping. During October I finally made time to buy a bike. I’ve taken a test ride, tweaked a few things, and started buying some accessories to kit up the bike like I want it. At $427 my new bike wasn’t super cheap but also not a budget-buster. I think there is about $100 worth of inflation and/or tariffs built into it (the same bike was $100 cheaper throughout 2024).
In other “general merchandise” purchases, Mrs. Root of Good bought some colorful metallic windmills for the yard from Amazon for $50 total for three of them.
Pics from our visit to Helsinki, Finland:
Groceries – $467:
We were in town for most of October but didn’t spend that much on groceries. I’m also getting a decent amount of groceries for free or very cheap from the dozen or so Doordash and Instacart credits that come with the handful of Chase credit cards that offer those monthly benefits.
Travel – $343:
Travel spending during October was all over the place. At the beginning of the month, we were in Europe finishing up our two week Baltic Capitals cruise. We spent about $60 on various transit and train tickets to get around the ports we visited and to get from the Rotterdam cruise port back to the Amsterdam Schipol Airport.
Other travel spending included $200 for the taxes on two British Airways flights home from London for next year. We booked the tickets with British Airways Avios points and received a lower than normal rate on the taxes of $100 per ticket.
The remaining $83 of travel spending covered the gas in our minivan for a short two day road trip to the mountains of Virginia. With the kids’ school and work schedules, we could only get away for two full days so we made the most of it. We packed some food from home and grazed plentifully on the free breakfast buffet at the hotel, so our food cost ended up being zero.
I paid for one night in the Hyatt hotel in Roanoke, Virginia with 6,500 Hyatt points (funded by 6,500 Ultimate Rewards points transferred from my Chase Sapphire Reserve card).
Blue Ridge Mountains vacation along the Virginia section of the Blue Ridge Parkway:
Get free travel like us
If you are interested in getting free travel from your credit card like I do, consider the Chase Ink business cards (my referral link). Right now, the Chase Ink cards offers an above average $750-900 worth of Chase Ultimate Rewards points that can be redeemed instantly for $750-900 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 125,000 point sign up bonus right now). I can transfer those Ultimate rewards points to over a dozen travel partners’ airline/hotel programs like United, Southwest, or Hyatt. For example, I transferred 6,500 Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt and used them to book a $300/night room that sleeps five during the peak season in the Virginia mountains.
Another excellent choice is the 85,000 point offer for one of the Chase Southwest Personal cards. Those are enough points for four round trip flights in the USA if you shop carefully.
Clothing/Shoes – $54:
A pre-cruise visit to the thrift shop for some new clothes. We bought about 15-20 items and the total was $54. They had a 25% off everything sale and also gave us a $5 off coupon as we walked in the door. They clearly knew I was coming and cranked the discounts up as a result!
I am pretty sure several of the articles of clothing I bought were brand new although none of them had the tags still attached.
Telephone – $44:
We renewed Mrs. Root of Good’s cell phone plan through Redpocket. The one year plan is $44 for a monthly allotment of 200 MB data, a few hundred minutes of talk time, and a few hundred texts.
Lately, we’ve been using Gigsky free 1 GB or 3 GB eSim chips that are a Visa cardholder perk for our international cell data needs while traveling.
Gas – $39:
A tank of gas for our minivan for driving around town. I included the $83 worth of road trip gas under the “travel” category of spending.
Restaurants – $26:
Mrs. Root of Good went out to lunch with her friends for $16.
I spent another $10 plus two $5 credits from my Chase Sapphire Reserve cards at Taco Bell. To sweeten the deal I added a 50% off coupon to the order. I believe we ended up with something like $40 worth of Taco Bell that night for $10 out of pocket.
Cable/Satellite/Internet – $25:
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.
Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $19:
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.
Mrs. Root of Good’s dental insurance was $19 total for one month. I stopped paying my dental insurance because I thought it was already paid through the end of October but apparently the dental insurance company disagreed with me and cancelled my coverage. We’ll see who wins this battle in the coming months. Wouldn’t it be nice if things just worked like they were supposed to?
Pics from our visit to Warnemunde and Rostock, Germany:
Spending for 2025 – Year to Date
We spent $31,295 during the first ten months of 2025. This annual spending is about $2,000 below our budgeted $33,333 for the first ten 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.
As the year draws to a close I think we will end the year very close to our $40,000 budget. I still have to pay our roughly $3,000 annual property tax bill so that will add quite a bit to our annual spending. However we only have about five weeks of 2025 remaining so we probably won’t spend a ton more this year unless some unexpected expense pops up last minute.
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
- August – $2,452
- September – $2,694
- October – $2,003
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 – $31,295 (through 10/31/2025)
Pics from our visit to Kiel, Germany:
Net Worth: $3,850,000 (+$23,000)
Our net worth shot up by another $23,000 to end the month of October at $3,850,000. We continue to approach the $4 million mark but we aren’t there yet.
Since I’m traveling half the time, I don’t really pay attention to my accounts on a routine basis. These monthly updates are typically when I tune in to my finances and see how I’m doing. As long as my credit cards work and the bills get paid on time, I suppose it doesn’t make much difference if I have $1 million or $4 million. Other than the psychological peace of mind of knowing I have way way way more than I ever need instead of just barely enough if everything goes right.
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
It’s hard to believe we are just over a month away from wrapping up 2025! This year has been a great year for us personally, financially, and as a family. We are very fortunate and have a lot to be thankful for during the upcoming holiday season.
Right now we are gearing up to host both of our extended families for Thanksgiving at our house in the coming days. Mrs. Root of Good’s side of the family is coming over on Thanksgiving day and my side of the family is coming over during the weekend. We intentionally took a break from travel so that we would be home during Thanksgiving and Christmas so we can spend time with family.
During our downtime in December and January, we’ll finish up the planning for a half dozen trips during 2026 and possibly book a few more adventures for 2026 and 2027 as well.
I always look forward to this time of year when it’s cool enough to have campfires. I just invited over a few friends that I haven’t seen in person in a while and it was great to catch up with them. I always have a blast and I think my guests do, too.
Happy Thanksgiving to those in the United States, and I’ll see you next month!
Turkey or something else? What’s the best Thanksgiving food?
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Great post. How many credit cards do you open each year to get points? Are your health care subsidies going up significantly if the ACA credits are not extended by Congress? Are you going to adjust your budget to account for that?
Credit cards – about 8 new cards per year for each of us. Some have very minimal spending requirements. But it’s a lot!
ACA subsidies – I don’t expect the congress will extend the credits. I am planning on the old ACA subsidy structure which is still very generous on the lower end of the income scale. I will probably experience $100-200 increases if any, which won’t hit the budget too hard.
Thanks for the reply! How do you get around the Chase 5/24 rule, which states that most personal and business credit cards from Chase will be denied if you have opened five or more credit card accounts (from any bank) in the past 24 months?
Almost all business cards do not count as part of the 5 cards under the Chase 5/24 rule. A few biz cards from Cap 1 DO count so you have to research a bit. In general I get a lot of biz cards so that I can still get Chase cards, and I try to stay at 4 personal cards maximum over any 24 month period.
It’s always a lift to get these monthly updates, Justin. I learn several new things/ideas from each one. Thanks for taking the time to write consistently. I am thankful to receive the info. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. 🦃
You’re welcome! Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours as well!
Thanks for posting, glad to hear things are going so well.
Building on Dave’s comment above I’m interested in the opening and closing credit cards, I’ve always been concerned about this for myself in that it might negatively impact my credit rating.
And the other subject with all the publicity and news about subsidies for healthcare going away I hope you can provide us information on how that works out, I sure hope you are not hurt by big increases that the media seems to be talking about
Happy Thanksgiving from Connecticut!
From what I have seen, a new credit card costs you about 5 points off your credit score and a lot of that is the application for credit itself. Having new cards will, however, lower your average age of credit but that is nowhere near as big of an impact on your credit score as paying your credit cards on time consistently. I am able to get ~8 new cards per year and rarely get denied for a new card. Looking back, I’ve had 5 denials and 18 approvals in the last 24 months.
ACA subsidies changing won’t impact me too much at the lower end of the scale. Maybe I pay $100 more per month. Or even more but that is because my taxable household size is likely to drop from 5 in the past to 3 or 4 in 2026 since the kids are getting older and becoming more independent.
Sorry I didn’t go back through your posts to find the answer to this, but do you pay annual fees on your cards or do you close/down grade all of them?
Some of the cards I opened up last year are starting to post their annual fees. I already closed my ink preferred. I’m wondering about my Chase Sapphire Preferred. I don’t want to lose the airline point transfer benefit. Do you pay the annual fee to keep your Sapphire reserve around?
Yes, I pay the annual fees on some cards, like the Sapphire Reserve. Basically so I can transfer points to travel partners or to redeem for 1.5x the value (My reserve is grandfathered in for 2 years to allow 1.5x redemptions). Just redeemed 36k points for $550 round trip flight from Raleigh to Barcelona, for example. Very good deal compared to paying $100+ in taxes and 40-80k in points if I booked an award ticket using frequent flyer miles. But I also use Hyatt hotel redemptions a decent amount too.
Cool, similar to what I’m doing then, thank you. Mind sharing what other cards you find worth paying the annual fee for?
Some hotel cards are decent. Pay $95-99 annual fee but get enough points for a free night somewhere that might cost $200+, and usually some other perks like elite hotel status, or discounts when redeeming (Wyndham Business card for example, $99 annual fee, 15000 pts, and it gives 10% discount on redemptions – I get a lot of $200-300/nt hotel rooms before cruises for 13.5k pts).
Capital One Venture X – $395 annual fee but they give you $300 in travel credit that’s very flexible plus $100 of points that you can straight up cash out or transfer as miles to a bunch of places. Basically washes out the annual fee.
Some airline cards – Chase United for example, some benefits and I’m able to wipe out the annual fee using several credits they give you (hotel discounts, $5-8/month Uber/lyft credits etc). Also southwest card – annual fee but we get free checked bags for everybody on the booking and seat selection, plus they give annual points that offsets about half the annual fee.
Really depends on what you’re booking and how you’re using the cards when deciding to pay these annual fees. I view it as buying discounted future travel or getting useful upgrades for a steep discount (buying seats or paying to check bags on 1 trip would cost more than the net annual fee for example).
just checked out redpocket thanks to your post…don’t see the $44/year plan.. is that a legacy plan??
I think it is. They sold $30/yr plans on Ebay about a year ago. I didn’t see them recently. They did add about $13 extra taxes this year at the renewal so now the $30 plan (that was $31-32 after taxes) is now $44/yr. Not sure if we’ll renew it again next year since there are a lot of plans with more data for just a bit more. My daughters that are commuting to work now, they went with the 1GB/mo redpocket plan for just over $100/yr. Working well so far for them. And on that plan, you never run out of data, they just downgrade you to really really slow service (512 kbps) after you consume the 1GB of high speed data. Not a bad deal if you are sipping the data and mostly on wifi in general.
Looking forward to hearing about your cruise through the Panama Canal.
We are thinking about doing that soon.
We hope you have a nice holiday season.
Best regards.
Thanks! I should have the next monthly update with Panama Canal cruise in there in a week or so.
Wonderful share. I think this month blog income is little bit more than your typical average around $600-$700 per month. I’m not seeing any youtube income here. Has that been factored into this? I want to use red pocket mobile in coming days. Is the service really good? I’m having some issues. What is your personal experience? What cellphone are you using with this carrier? Does this work with older version of iphone say iphone 12?
No more Youtube income. Our viewers dropped to the point where we got demonetized by Youtube. It was great while it lasted though!
RedPocket has worked fine for us. I think the first issue we had was this fall when my daughter had to call in to get them to activate her new service. They fixed it pretty easily so it was no big deal. We have or have had Pixel 3 and Pixel 7 Pro, Moto G Stylus 2021, Moto Edge 2024 on Redpocket and they all worked fine. No Iphones so I can’t say for sure if it works but it should as it’s just a SIM chip you pop in the phone. They probably have E-sims too but I am not really sure.
Thank you. Do you make use of this during international travel?
Our Redpocket plans do not have service internationally. I am not sure if you can add on international data service, but maybe it’s possible? I use GoogleFi in the past and more recently, GigSky e-sims in the past 6 months for international travel. Gigsky offers a free 15 day plan for each Visa card you hold, and I’m still using up those free plans (and they reset annually)
For cruises, do you purchase travel protection insurance either through the cruise line or third party? Or do you rely on your credit card coverage for insurance?
We mostly take on the risk of losing our deposits for cruises. We do have decent insurance through credit cards that might cover the cost of the cruise if our flights weren’t able to make it. But overall it’s not a big enough expense for us to worry about. Easier to self-insure if our free insurance won’t cover costs.
It was great while it lasted, but I feel like Chase has pretty much ruined the Sapphire Reserve card by getting rid of the 1.5x point redemption for travel and turning it into a coupon book of mostly useless credits for things I don’t care about. I plan to use up my grandfathered pre-November 2025 Chase points before the next annual fee hits me in late ’26 and downgrade the card to a Sapphire Preferred. I currently have 4 different Chase cards, but will have to evaluate whether that still makes any sense or whether I’d be better off in the Citi card system (or other) for my go to cards. I’ve already moved most of my spending to new Citi and Wells Fargo cards based on my near term travel plans.
I don’t blame you. The Sapphire Reserve is getting a lot worse given how I use it. Right now I am struggling to find a way to use up the $250 The Edit credits. All the hotels are $250 to $500 per night and up it seems. Very few reasonably priced hotels. And I do a lot of 1 night hotel stays that are ineligible for the $250 The Edit credit. I will keep the card till 2027 since I have a ton of grandfathered Chase UR points and re-evaluate at that point. Great sign up bonus but the diminishing value I get means I don’t know if it’s a keeper like it used to be. I do use the Sapphire Lounges occasionally and they are really nice. Not $795/yr nice but they are worth something if you fly a lot through airports with Chase Sapphire lounges.
Long time reader. Thanks Justin for all you’ve shared and guided us on over the years! Seems like the ads this month make it painful to get through the page due to lagging and inability to scroll while ads loaded. Something different this month?
My advertiser has switched things around some. I changed the settings to make it more readable so hopefully it’s better. Or it could have been some short-term tech issue. Not really sure to be honest!
I’m always impressed by the way you do financial planning. But many a times the places in vacation includes churches, fort, castle. Don’t you feel bored??
“church, fort, castle” – churches, yeah they get boring after a while. Forts and castles?!?! How can those ever get boring???
Ha ha ha – yes, we do get “castle fatigue” sometimes during our long summer trips. We do try to diversify what we’re seeing when we travel so it’s not just the churches and castles all day. More outdoors, nature, rivers/lakes/oceans. More wonky little spots in cities and local museums. Maybe those are not as photogenic so they don’t make it past my photo editor into the blog.