November 2024 Early Retirement Update – Home for the Holidays Edition

Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! We are back home in Raleigh for a two month period to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with our families. 

After a busy travel season from April to November, where we spent five months on vacation, it’s time for a break. A vacation from vacationing (ha ha ha!).

I have a growing to-do list of deferred maintenance tasks around the house to keep me busy over the holidays. On top of that, I need to tackle the ordinary end of year financial and administrative chores such as tax optimizing, financial recordkeeping, and enrolling in an ACA health insurance plan. 

December and January won’t be all work and no play, however. I expect to have lots of lazy days around the house enjoying the quiet of winter as well. 

On to our financial progress. November was a mixed month for our finances. Our net worth increased by $102,000 to end the month at $3,376,000. Our income of $3,675 was substantially lower than our spending of $11,184 for the month of November.  

Let’s jump into the details from last month.

Income

Investment income totaled $544 in November. 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. However, December is always the biggest month for dividends so our payday isn’t very far away at this point in the year. Here’s more on our dividend investments.

Blog income totaled $846 for the month. This represents a slightly above average month of blog income. 

My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $0 last month. I was out of town most of November but picked up several new consulting clients during last month while I was on my cruise. Their payments all posted in December so I’ll have a great month to report next month.

Since I never pay for the usuriously expensive internet plans on the cruise ships ($20+ per day typically), I rely on grabbing some data while in port to check up on things. I use Google Fi for international cell data or a free wifi spot at the port building or a local business. My normal replies to client inquiries are quick and short. Just a quick note to let them know I received their consulting inquiry and that I’ll reply in detail once I’m back on land. This method seems to work well enough for those clients genuinely interested in setting up a consulting session. 

Tradeline sales income totaled $475 in November. Another good 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’ve made over $6,000 in exchange for lending out my stellar credit history from half a dozen credit cards. 

For last month, my “deposit income” was $30. 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 $25 purchase through Rakuten, you’ll get a $10 sign up bonus (or more!). 

My bank and credit card bonuses totaled $1,779 last month. This amount comes from the Chase Sapphire Reserve’s “Pay Yourself Back” feature. I get a 25% bonus when I redeem the Chase Ultimate Rewards points to reimburse for my purchases in select categories like utilities and insurance. Since I have a TON of Chase points, I have started cashing them out by placing my utility and insurance payments on my Chase Sapphire Reserve card and using the 25% bonus Pay Yourself Back redemptions. 

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 November expenses:

In total, we spent $11,184 during the month of November which is about $8,000 more than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Healthcare/Dental and Insurance were the two largest categories from last month. 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $8,670:

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. 

The largest portion of our healthcare spending for November came from a dental procedure that cost $8,633 and wasn’t covered by our basic dental insurance. This expense is a lot more than our typical annual healthcare/dental spending, but something to be expected occasionally over the course of decades of early retirement. 2024 will be an expensive year for healthcare/dental spending but every other year of the past decade has seen relatively modest spending in this category. 

On a side note, this lumpy healthcare/dental spending is fully reimbursable from our six-figure Health Savings Account. I don’t know whether I’ll reimburse myself immediately or leave the funds in the HSA to continue growing tax free for a while. I can save the receipt and reimburse myself at any point in the future whenever I want a cash infusion. 

Insurance – $1,355:

Our six-month auto insurance bill came due in November. That works out to $225 per month. I don’t know what others are paying, but that number feels pretty reasonable for insuring two teen drivers and two experienced adult drivers. About 80% of the premium comes from the two teen drivers due to the much higher risk profile.

Long term, these auto insurance premiums will decline. In two years, both teen drivers will be experienced drivers and the rates will drop significantly. And the expectation is that these teen drivers will graduate college and get great jobs so they can cover their own insurance.

Over a decade ago when planning for early retirement with three kids, I had budgeted a lot more for the “expensive teen years” in part due to high auto insurance premiums. In hindsight, the auto insurance wasn’t as much as I was anticipating. 

Groceries – $562:

The total we spent on groceries for November was $562. We were gone for over half of the month on our cruise so we just weren’t here to shop as much. And of course we didn’t have to buy our own groceries to feed ourselves for 16 days while we were dining on the cruise ship. 

Utilities – $229:

We spent $139 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month. 

The electric bill was $90 last month. That probably includes a few days of using the air conditioner during the billing period, but AC usage should drop to almost zero for the next few months since it’s wintertime now. Of course we always have a couple of swampy warm and humid days in the middle of winter where we have to crank the AC a bit to knock out some humidity inside the house. 

No natural gas bill in November since I paid it twice during October. 

Travel – $193:

We spent $56 on our cruise in November. $38 for the Ubers to the port and back to the airport. $18 for round trip bus fares for two while in Bermuda for the day. Everything else was pre-paid in early 2024. 

To help us in our numerous trips every year, we bought a new carry-on bag for $42 on a Black Friday sale. 

The remaining travel spending of $95 was an annual fee on the Wyndham Business credit card. In exchange for the fee, we get 15,000 Wyndham hotel points and Diamond status. In the past, I used this status to match to Caesars Diamond status and then match to other casinos and cruise lines for free cruises and comps. In 2025 the Caesars Diamond match goes away, so the utility of this card drops quite a bit.

I’ll keep the Wyndham Business card for one more year, then re-evaluate its value. The annual 15,000 Wyndham points are worth more than the $95 annual fee. We routinely booked $300+ hotel rooms for 13,5000 Wyndham points during 2024. In effect, we’re buying a $300 hotel night for $95. 

 

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!). 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 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. 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.

Gifts – $84:

Christmas gifts. Some of our gift spending gets lumped into “groceries” or “general merchandise” expense categories because I sometimes forget to break out the spending into distinct categories for purchases at Amazon and Walmart (for example). 

Electronics – $49:

I bought myself a new Motorola Edge 2024 cell phone at a steeply discounted price of $49. It’s a nice lightweight mid-range cell phone that would normally be $200-300. 

I didn’t really need a new phone yet but eventually I will. Why not upgrade when it’s cheap to do so? Eventually my old phone won’t get operating system updates and security updates. This was more of a software obsolescence issue than the hardware or battery failing me on the old phone. I already had to sideload an app on my old phone because the OS was too dated, so it was time to upgrade for convenience’s sake. And for security purposes as well.

Cable/Satellite/Internet – $25:

We usually 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. 

Gas – $21:

A tank of gas for our Hyundai Accent for $21. Gotta love cheap gas in a car that sips fuel. Our daughter drives 13 miles round trip to her university four days per week. As a result, we have to refuel once per month or sometimes more often.

Restaurants – $0:

No restaurant spending in November.

Spending for 2024 – Year to Date

We spent $38,185 for the first eleven months of 2024. This annual spending is about $1,500 more than the budgeted $36,667 for eleven 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. 

We are slightly above target for our budgeted year to date spending and December is quickly drawing to a close. We don’t have a lot of spending planned for the end of the year other than a $3,000 annual property tax bill. If I end up paying it during December that will push us over the $40,000 budget amount for the full year.

Maybe 2025 is the year I revisit our annual budget and give us a raise. Inflation has been a significant force over the last decade, with everything 35% more expensive than it was in 2013 when I retired. 

Monthly Expense Summary for 2024:

• January – $1,828
• February – $1,746
• March – $3,525
• April – $1,719
• May – $1,875
• June – $5,889
• July – $3,735
• August – $3,348
• September – $1,768
• October – $1,570
• November – $11,184

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 – $38,185 (through 11/30/2024)

Net Worth: $3,376,000 (+$102,000)

After watching our net worth drop $92,000 in October then recover by $102,000 in November, we hit another all time high last month. Our net worth ended the month of November at $3,376,000. And December is looking good so far. 

I love watching these six figure monthly swings while not worrying about them. It goes up, it goes down. I mostly check in once per month for the purposes of my monthly update posts. Losing $100,000 in a month doesn’t bother me a bit because I know the monthly fluctuations don’t matter nearly as much as the long term average gains do. 

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

While I’m on cruises, I always enjoy talking to the various crew and officers from around the world.  On the last two cruises I spoke to several guys from the Philippines. 

During a quiet evening, our stateroom attendant chatted with us for 30 minutes about life on board, his life back home in the Philippines, and his future goals. He said he enjoyed the opportunity to practice his English with us Americans (who he likes a lot!). 

Our stateroom attendant was pursuing Financial Independence without really calling it that. He used his outsized earnings from cruise ship work to fund the construction of an 8 unit apartment building back home. His goal is to eventually get enough income from investments so he won’t have to work any more. So far his apartment building provides $600 USD in profit per month. This doesn’t sound like a lot but it is roughly double the minimum wage in the Philippines. 

I didn’t ask how much he makes on the cruise ship but from my research, I think most of the ship’s crew earn about five times as much as they could back in the Philippines. These outsized earnings generate a significant surplus above living expenses that can then be invested in income producing assets. Pretty amazing that this guy is doing the same thing that got us to financial independence. Work, save, invest, retire. 

The downside to working on the ship is the sacrifice of being away from home. Our stateroom attendant didn’t have a wife or kids (yet) but he said those are both future goals of his once he’s able to return home to the Philippines and settle down for good. 

Another crewmember on our more recent cruise told us his story. He said he had a wife and two kids, age 7 and 11, back home in the Philippines. We initially met him in our hotel in Boston the night before we set sail. He had just arrived to Boston from the Philippines, about to start his seven month contract on the Holland America ship we were on. That’s hard to imagine leaving your family for seven months straight. And on top of being away from home for extended periods, these guys have to work 10-12 hours per day, seven days per week with hardly a day off for most of their contract. 

But the sacrifice must be worth it because there are tons of crewmembers that have spent a decade or two working on cruises. I suppose this is analogous to working on an oil rig in the USA. You’re gone for long stretches of time and working hard for 12 hour days but you make two to four times what you could make at home. 

When I see these guys working hard and saving for their futures, I am reminded how fortunate we are today. Those years of hard work are behind us. Now we get to cash in the rewards of all that hard work. Whether it’s propping our feet up on a cold winter’s day or heading out for yet another tropical cruise, we have the financial flexibility and free time to enjoy a slower pace of life today. 

Well folks, that’s it for me this month. See you in January! 

It’s almost 2025, are you ready for the new year?! 

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