August 2024 Early Retirement Replace – Saying Goodbye To Poland

Welcome again to a different month-to-month replace from Root of Good! After spending over two months exploring Poland this summer season, we have now loved the previous month of rest at our dwelling in Raleigh now that we’re again. As this put up goes stay, we’re mere days away from setting off for a two week cruise to Alaska to complete out the month of September. 

October and November will probably be equally busy with a prolonged cruise scheduled for every of these months.  Then we have now the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays again at dwelling in Raleigh. The remainder of 2024 seems fairly busy! 

On to our monetary progress. August was one other nice month for our funds. Our web price shot up by $63,000 to finish the month at $3,312,000. Our revenue of $2,604 was a bit lower than our spending of $3,348 for the month of August.  

Let’s bounce into the small print from final month.

Revenue

Funding revenue totaled $541 in August. Our fairness index funds and ETFs pay dividends quarterly on the finish of March, June, September, and December. Consequently, we had a smaller than regular quantity of funding revenue final month. Right here’s extra on our dividend investments.

Weblog revenue totaled $727 for the month. This represents a median month of weblog revenue. 

My early retirement life-style consulting revenue (“consulting”) dropped to zero final month. I picked up a two hour consulting session early in September so I gained’t be displaying a zero within the subsequent month-to-month replace. Nevertheless, with my busy journey schedule, I’ll need to postpone further consulting periods till October at this level. I prioritize leisure over work. 

Tradeline gross sales revenue totaled $1,325 in August. One other nice month. I ramped up my tradeline gross sales a couple of years in the past and mentioned it in a bit extra element in my October 2020 month-to-month put up and in my July 2021 month-to-month put up. Most years I make round $4,000 to $6,000 in trade for lending out my stellar credit score historical past from half a dozen bank cards. 

For final month, my “deposit revenue” was $10. The deposit revenue got here from money again and incentive bonuses from the Rakuten.com and Mrrebates.com on-line purchasing portals (a few of which was earned from you readers signing up by these hyperlinks).

If you happen to join Rakuten by this hyperlink and make a qualifying $25 buy by Rakuten, you’ll get a $10 join bonus (or extra!). 

If you happen to’re fascinated with monitoring your revenue and bills like I do, then try Empower Private Dashboard, previously often known as Private Capital (it’s free!). All of our financial savings and spending accounts (together with checking, cash market, and greater than half a dozen bank cards) are all linked and up to date in actual time by Empower Private Dashboard. Now we have accounts in all places, and Empower Private Dashboard makes it very easy to test on every thing at one time.

Empower Private Dashboard can also be a stable software for funding administration. Preserving monitor of our total funding portfolio takes two clicks. If you happen to haven’t signed up for the free Empower Private Dashboard service, test it out right this moment (overview right here).

Monitoring spending was one of many essential steps I took that allowed me to retire at 33. And it’s now simpler than ever with Empower Private Dashboard.

Bills

Now let’s check out August bills:

In complete, we spent $3,348 through the month of August which is coincidentally very near our frequently budgeted $3,333 per 30 days (or $40,000 per 12 months). Automotive and groceries had been the 2 largest classes from final month. 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

Automotive – $1,151:

Since we’ve been touring a lot, we had a little bit of deferred upkeep on our new-ish Hyundai Accent we purchased one 12 months in the past. I lastly took it into the store and had a number of fluids flushed and changed together with a full substitute of the rear shocks. The full got here to $885 for all of that. 

Different automotive bills embody the annual automobile inspection, registration, and taxes due for the Hyundai Accent which totaled $213. 

The ultimate merchandise within the automotive expense class is the everlasting driver’s license for our second oldest baby. She turned 18 final month and needed to go in for her grownup driver’s license. The full price was $53 and it’s legitimate for 8 years. 

Groceries – $606:

We had been solely dwelling 18 days throughout August so it’s considerably stunning we nonetheless spent $606 through the month. However I suppose we spent greater than regular to restock our fridge and freezer after being gone all summer season.

Happily, it looks like grocery costs in Raleigh have leveled off for probably the most half. I didn’t discover many issues going up in value whereas we had been gone. 

Journey – $507:

We had been in Poland for 13 days throughout August. Our spending of $507 was decrease than I’d have guessed till I pulled our expense information from the Empower monitoring dashboard. Since we already paid for all lodging and the rental automotive in earlier months, we solely needed to pay for meals, gasoline, parking, and admission to sights through the month of August. 

I didn’t monitor the journey spending in advantageous element, however I’ve a tough estimate of the place that $507 journey spending went:

• $60 – gasoline for rental automotive
• $20 – parking
• $100 – eating places
• $182 – groceries
• $25 – tickets to sights (we went to a number of museums and a fort on their “free entry” days)
• $120 – souvenirs (largely amber from Gdansk)

For many of our time in Poland throughout August, we stayed in Gdansk the place we cooked most meals at dwelling in our Airbnb. We took a number of day journeys to the encompassing areas to go to the Baltic Sea and a fort. 

We visited the historic a part of Gdansk on a couple of totally different days to do some sightseeing within the heart of city. 

A fast observe on our lodging selections in Europe. I had somebody ask to see the type of locations we sometimes keep in whereas vacationing abroad. I’m pulling collectively a particular article to be launched in a few week the place I’ll share pics and particulars of a lot of the locations we stayed this summer season in Poland. You’ll most likely be shocked by what a $50/night time lodge room or a $75/night time house seems like! 

Get free journey like us

If you’re fascinated with getting free journey out of your bank card like I do, take into account the Chase Ink Limitless enterprise playing cards (my referral hyperlink). Proper now, the Chase Ink Unlimtied enterprise card presents an above common $900 price of Chase Final Rewards factors that may be redeemed immediately for $900 in money (or much more for journey!). I simply signed up for an additional new Ink card to snag one in all these nice bonus presents.

Chase is fairly liberal relating to “what’s a enterprise”. If you happen to promote stuff on eBay or Craigslist or do some odd jobs sometimes then you’ve a enterprise and will get a bank card as a “sole proprietor”. 

I exploit the 90,000 Chase Final Rewards factors by transferring them to my Chase Sapphire Reserve card (additionally providing a 60,000 level join bonus proper now). With the Sapphire Reserve card, I can get 1.5x the factors worth by reserving cruises, flights, resorts, or rental vehicles by their journey portal. For instance, I used 165,000 Chase Final Reward factors to pay for the $2,475 in taxes, charges, and gratuities on two of my cruises. Or I can switch these Final rewards factors to over a dozen journey companions’ airline/lodge applications like United, Southwest, or Hyatt. 

Capital One VentureX card

One other favourite journey card in my pockets is the Capital One Enterprise X card. The Enterprise X card is a “keeper” for me. First off, it comes with a $750 join bonus after spending $4,000 within the first three months. The bonus is paid within the type of 75,000 bonus factors that you may redeem towards any journey purchases from anyplace. You then earn a stable 2 factors per greenback spent eternally! The opposite massive perk is airport lounge entry. You will get your self plus limitless visitors into Precedence Move lounges. And also you plus two visitors can get into Plaza Premium community lounges and Capital One Lounges. 

The Capital One Enterprise X card does have one catch – a $395 annual payment. However they reward you yearly with a straightforward to make use of $300 journey low cost plus $100 price of factors. Collectively, that makes $400 they offer you yearly which utterly offsets the annual payment. One other profit price mentioning: you’ll be able to add as much as 4 licensed customers without cost, they usually additionally get all the advantages of the Enterprise X card together with the dear airport lounge entry. We used this perk to “present” a pair of Enterprise X playing cards with airport lounge entry to my brother in legislation and his spouse to make use of on their household journey again dwelling to Cambodia final April with their two younger kids. 

Because the annual payment is offset in full by journey credit every year, I personally plan on conserving the Enterprise X card eternally for the reason that card advantages are so nice.

Clothes/Sneakers – $431:

Again to highschool searching for our son, plus Mrs. Root of Good occurring a purchasing spree for herself. We determined our grownup kids come up with the money for to pay for their very own garments, so our clothes/sneakers spending must be decrease going ahead. 

Utilities – $303:

We spent $71 on our water/sewer/trash invoice final month. The water consumption is way decrease when there is just one individual at dwelling, as was the case for nearly half of August.

The pure gasoline invoice was $30. 

The electrical energy invoice was $202 for final month. August is a peak utilization month the place the AC runs loads, and future payments will probably be decrease all through the cooler components of the 12 months.

Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $183:

Our present 2024 medical health insurance is free, due to very beneficiant Inexpensive Care Act subsidies that we obtain resulting from our low ~$48,000 per 12 months Adjusted Gross Revenue. 

Our 2024 dental insurance coverage plan prices $37 in premiums per 30 days. We picked a plan from Truassure by the healthcare.gov trade. The dental insurance coverage does an excellent job of overlaying routine cleanings, exams, and x-rays plus most of the price of fundamental procedures like fillings. 

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

Gasoline – $78:

I embody gasoline for our Poland rental automotive within the “journey” finances class. The $78 recorded right here within the “gasoline” class covers a tank of gasoline for every of our two vehicles. We drove to the auto store within the a part of city the place gasoline is cheaper so we stuffed up each tanks whereas over there. 

Phone – $65:

We use Redpocket Cell’s annual plan that prices a bit over $32 for the annual renewal. Two of our strains got here up for renewal throughout August. These are very gentle on information at solely 200 MB per 30 days however we are able to add further MB’s of information for a small payment on an as-needed foundation.

Cable/Satellite tv for pc/Web – $25:

We pay $25 per 30 days for a neighborhood lowered charge bundle resulting from having a decrease revenue and having youngsters. 50 mbit/s obtain, 10 mbit/s add. 

Dwelling Upkeep – $3:

A gallon of gasoline for the lawnmower. 

Spending for 2024 – 12 months to Date

 
We spent $23,665 for the primary eight months of 2024. This annual spending is about $3,000 lower than the budgeted $26,667 for eight months per our $40,000 annual early retirement finances. I haven’t elevated our annual finances for inflation in a decade, so in some unspecified time in the future I have to revisit the finances numbers. Thus far, so good! No want to provide ourselves a increase if we’re managing simply advantageous throughout the present finances. 

We’re operating beneath finances for the 12 months up to now. Nevertheless we have now some upcoming dental bills of an unknown magnitude that might shortly put us over our annual spending goal. The excellent news is that our HSA has grown over time to a gift worth simply over $100,000. So if we have to, we are able to cowl a big dental or medical invoice out of the HSA account with out paying any taxes on the withdrawal.

In upcoming journey spending, we have now six weeks of cruises arising throughout September, October, and November. They’re all paid for and all flights and pre-cruise resorts are booked. So trip bills must be modest for the remainder of 2024 aside from the occasional Uber, transit ticket, rental automotive, or incidental expense. 

We might begin reserving components of our massive summer season 2025 journey in late 2024. However first we have now to determine what we’re doing, which child(s) goes with us, and after we’ll journey. Now we have a variety of unknowns proper now. 

Month-to-month Expense Abstract for 2024:

Abstract of annual spending from greater 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 (by 8/31/2024)

Web Value: $3,312,000 (+$63,000)

Our web price shot up by $63,000 to finish the month at $3,312,000. One other month with one other new all time excessive! Within the first few days of September we’ve seen a small pullback in valuations however we’re nonetheless near our all time excessive web price. 

For the curious, our web price reported above consists of our dwelling worth (which is absolutely paid off). I worth the home at $300,000, which might be what we’d web after gross sales bills. Nevertheless, please observe that I don’t take into account my dwelling worth as a part of my portfolio for “4% rule” calculation functions. I understand people ask me about that each month so I simply needed to state that right here for readability.

Life replace

One other month of having fun with the early retired life. Throughout August I hit the 11 12 months anniversary of leaving work for good. It looks like such a very long time in the past at this level. I’ve been retired longer than I ever labored (if we don’t embody half time and summer season jobs throughout faculty). 

What a good time to be alive. To have the ability to get pleasure from a affluent financial system that lets regular folks like me save and make investments sufficient in a decade to set myself up for a lot of many profitable a long time of retirement. 

And I don’t even need to pay shut consideration to maintain the monetary ball rolling. I’ve a couple of million {dollars} of index funds within the portfolio they usually simply carry on doing their job. The investments proceed rising my wealth long run whereas spitting out sufficient dividends and capital features to maintain a roof over my head, meals on my desk, and vehicles in my driveway. 

And that’s fairly nice. 

Properly people, that’s it for me this month. See you subsequent month as soon as I get again from Alaska! 

Are you prepared for summer season to finish? I do know I’m completed with the warmth and humidity! 

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