August 2024 Early Retirement Update – Saying Goodbye To Poland

Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! After spending over two months exploring Poland this summer, we have enjoyed the past month of relaxation at our home in Raleigh now that we are back. As this post goes live, we are mere days away from setting off for a two week cruise to Alaska to finish out the month of September. 

October and November will be similarly busy with a lengthy cruise scheduled for each of those months.  Then we have the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays back at home in Raleigh. The rest of 2024 looks quite busy! 

On to our financial progress. August was another great month for our finances. Our net worth shot up by $63,000 to end the month at $3,312,000. Our income of $2,604 was a bit less than our spending of $3,348 for the month of August.  

Let’s jump into the details from last month.

Income

Investment income totaled $541 in August. Our equity index funds and ETFs pay dividends quarterly at the end of March, June, September, and December. As a result, we had a smaller than normal amount of investment income last month. Here’s more on our dividend investments.

Blog income totaled $727 for the month. This represents an average month of blog income. 

My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) dropped to zero last month. I picked up a two hour consulting session early in September so I won’t be showing a zero in the next monthly update. However, with my busy travel schedule, I’ll have to postpone additional consulting sessions until October at this point. I prioritize leisure over work. 

Tradeline sales income totaled $1,325 in August. Another great 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. Most years I make around $4,000 to $6,000 in exchange for lending out my stellar credit history from half a dozen credit cards. 

For last month, my “deposit income” was $10. The deposit income 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 (or more!). 

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 August expenses:

In total, we spent $3,348 during the month of August which is coincidentally very close to our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Automotive and groceries were the two largest categories from last month. 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

Automotive – $1,151:

Since we’ve been traveling so much, we had a bit of deferred maintenance on our new-ish Hyundai Accent we bought one year ago. I finally took it into the shop and had several fluids flushed and replaced along with a full replacement of the rear shocks. The total came to $885 for all of that. 

Other automotive expenses include the annual vehicle inspection, registration, and taxes due for the Hyundai Accent which totaled $213. 

The final item in the automotive expense category is the permanent driver’s license for our second oldest child. She turned 18 last month and had to go in for her adult driver’s license. The total cost was $53 and it’s valid for 8 years. 

Groceries – $606:

We were only home 18 days during August so it is somewhat surprising we still spent $606 during the month. But I guess we spent more than normal to restock our fridge and freezer after being gone all summer.

Fortunately, it seems like grocery prices in Raleigh have leveled off for the most part. I didn’t notice many things going up in price while we were gone. 

Travel – $507:

We were in Poland for 13 days during August. Our spending of $507 was lower than I would have guessed until I pulled our expense data from the Empower tracking dashboard. Since we already paid for all lodging and the rental car in previous months, we only had to pay for food, gas, parking, and admission to attractions during the month of August. 

I didn’t track the travel spending in fine detail, but I have a rough estimate of where that $507 travel spending went:

• $60 – gas for rental car
• $20 – parking
• $100 – restaurants
• $182 – groceries
• $25 – tickets to attractions (we went to several museums and a castle on their “free entry” days)
• $120 – souvenirs (mostly amber from Gdansk)

For most of our time in Poland during August, we stayed in Gdansk where we cooked most meals at home in our Airbnb. We took several day trips to the surrounding areas to visit the Baltic Sea and a castle. 

We visited the historic part of Gdansk on a few different days to do some sightseeing in the center of town. 

A quick note on our lodging choices in Europe. I had someone ask to see the kind of places we typically stay in while vacationing overseas. I’m pulling together a special article to be released in about a week where I will share pics and details of most of the places we stayed this summer in Poland. You’ll probably be surprised by what a $50/night hotel room or a $75/night apartment looks like! 

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 business cards (my referral link). Right now, the Chase Ink Unlimtied 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!). I just signed up for another new Ink card to snag one of these great bonus offers.

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. 

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 plus two 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. Another benefit worth mentioning: you can add up to four authorized users for free, and they also get all the benefits of the Venture X card including the valuable airport lounge access. We used this perk to “gift” a pair of Venture X cards with airport lounge access to my brother in law and his wife to use on their family trip back home to Cambodia last April with their two young children. 

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.

Clothing/Shoes – $431:

Back to school shopping for our son, plus Mrs. Root of Good going on a shopping spree for herself. We decided our adult children have enough money to pay for their own clothes, so our clothing/shoes spending should be lower going forward. 

Utilities – $303:

We spent $71 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month. The water consumption is much lower when there is only one person at home, as was the case for almost half of August.

The natural gas bill was $30. 

The electricity bill was $202 for last month. August is a peak usage month where the AC runs a lot, and future bills will be lower throughout the cooler parts of the year.

Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $183:

Our current 2024 health insurance is free, thanks to very generous Affordable Care Act subsidies that we receive due to our low ~$48,000 per year Adjusted Gross Income. 

Our 2024 dental insurance plan costs $37 in premiums per month. We picked a plan from Truassure through the healthcare.gov exchange. The dental insurance does a good job of covering routine cleanings, exams, and x-rays plus most of the cost of basic procedures like fillings. 

Mrs. Root of Good had a dental visit in August and the copay was $147. 

Gas – $78:

I include gas for our Poland rental car in the “travel” budget category. The $78 recorded here in the “gas” category covers a tank of gas for each of our two cars. We drove to the auto shop in the part of town where gas is cheaper so we filled up both tanks while over there. 

Telephone – $65:

We use Redpocket Mobile’s annual plan that costs a bit over $32 for the annual renewal. Two of our lines came up for renewal during August. These are very light on data at only 200 MB per month but we can add extra MB’s of data for a small fee on an as-needed basis.

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. 

Home Maintenance – $3:

A gallon of gas for the lawnmower. 

Spending for 2024 – Year to Date

 
We spent $23,665 for the first eight months of 2024. This annual spending is about $3,000 less than the budgeted $26,667 for eight months 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. So far, so good! No need to give ourselves a raise if we’re managing just fine within the current budget. 

We’re running under budget for the year so far. However we have some upcoming dental expenses of an unknown magnitude that could quickly put us over our annual spending target. The good news is that our HSA has grown over the years to a present value just over $100,000. So if we need to, we can cover a large dental or medical bill out of the HSA account without paying any taxes on the withdrawal.

In upcoming travel spending, we have six weeks of cruises coming up during September, October, and November. They are all paid for and all flights and pre-cruise hotels are booked. So vacation expenses should be modest for the rest of 2024 other than the occasional Uber, transit ticket, rental car, or incidental expense. 

We may start booking parts of our big summer 2025 trip in late 2024. But first we have to figure out what we’re doing, which kid(s) is going with us, and when we’ll travel. We have a lot of unknowns right now. 

Monthly Expense Summary for 2024:

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 – $23,665 (through 8/31/2024)

Net Worth: $3,312,000 (+$63,000)

Our net worth shot up by $63,000 to end the month at $3,312,000. Another month with another new all time high! In the first few days of September we’ve seen a small pullback in valuations but we’re still close to our all time high net worth. 

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.

Life update

Another month of enjoying the early retired life. During August I hit the 11 year anniversary of leaving work for good. It seems like such a long time ago at this point. I have been retired longer than I ever worked (if we don’t include part time and summer jobs during school). 

What a great time to be alive. To be able to enjoy a prosperous economy that lets normal people like me save and invest enough in a decade to set myself up for many many successful decades of retirement. 

And I don’t even have to pay close attention to keep the financial ball rolling. I have a few million dollars of index funds in the portfolio and they just keep on doing their job. The investments continue growing my wealth long term while spitting out enough dividends and capital gains to keep a roof over my head, food on my table, and cars in my driveway. 

And that’s pretty great. 

Well folks, that’s it for me this month. See you next month once I get back from Alaska! 

Are you ready for summer to end? I know I’m done with the heat and humidity! 

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