February 2025 Early Retirement Update – Springtime Edition

Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! This month’s update is a little later than usual since I’ve been on vacation during the first part of March. We got home a few days ago and I’m finally catching up on things around the house. 

Our last cruise was actually two week-long cruises back to back on the MSC Seascape sailing out of Miami. We had perfect weather that let us explore some new islands or new parts of the islands we’ve already been to in the past. 

Now we get to enjoy almost a month at home before our next Caribbean cruise in April. But before that cruise we have a short two day North Carolina beach getaway coming up soon. 

My plans for our month at home are to finish my taxes, catch up on some reading, and set the hammocks up in the yard to enjoy the spring weather that’s finally here. 

On to our financial progress. February was a great month for our finances all around. Our net worth climbed by $39,000 to end the month at $3,361,000. Our February income of $4,844 was almost double our spending of $2,462 for the month.

Let’s jump into the details from last month.

 

Income

Investment income totaled $617 in February. 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 $591 for the month. This represents an average month of blog income. 

My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $1,259 last month. This represents seven hours of consulting. Most of those hours will occur during March since I was booking pretty far out in the calendar due to my February and March vacation schedule. 

Tradeline sales income totaled $200 last month. Another slow but steady month of tradeline sales. 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. 

 

 

For last month, my “deposit income” was $5 due to 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 $2,171 last month. Of the total, $396 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. 

The remaining $1,775 of bank and credit card bonus income was $1,000 from transferring some funds to my IRA at Citibank plus a $775 bonus from a new credit card sign up. Tune in next month as I hope to reveal a massive windfall in the bank/brokerage sign up bonus category. 

 

 

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 February expenses:

 

 

In total, we spent $2,462 during the month of February which is about $900 less than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Travel and groceries were the two largest categories from last month. 

 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

 

Travel – $1,113:

The biggest single travel expense from February was the $971 payment for a one week cruise for three of us during the summertime in two balcony cabins. We’ll pay another $323 to add one more kid to the cruise as long as her future work schedule doesn’t prevent her from joining us on the cruise.

The other main travel expense was $117 for three Ubers to and from the cruise ports in San Francisco and Miami. We also spent $4 on souvenirs on our latest cruise. 

Rounding out the travel spending for February is $23 in taxes and fees for four otherwise free Southwest flights to and from Florida for our summertime family cruise. 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Groceries – $623:

We were at home in Raleigh for almost three full weeks during February and we managed to spend $623 on groceries. That’s not bad given recent grocery inflation. Someone asked me recently if our food budget is lower because we eat on board cruise ships so often. The truth is we do end up spending a bit less on food for us adults. But our kids are usually at home during the school year and still need to eat, so our monthly grocery spending doesn’t drop drastically. 

 

Utilities – $426:

We spent $138 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month. 

The electric bill was $97 last month. 

The natural gas bill was $192 for February for the water heater and gas furnace. The February bill was the highest natural gas bill we’ll have all year. Since it’s much warmer now, we will see much smaller heating bills starting next month. 

 

 

Automotive – $142:

During February, I took our Toyota Sienna minivan in for the annual North Carolina state inspection. Normally that comes with a $30 price tag, however I had a $10 off coupon bringing the total to $20. 

Once the inspection was complete, I then completed the annual registration process and paid the annual car property tax bill for the van. Those two items totaled $122. 

 

Home Maintenance – $51:

I Doordashed a couple of orders from Home Depot using some 50% off coupons and some Chase Sapphire Reserve Doordash credits. In total I got about $100 worth of stuff for $51 after the tips and fees.

What did I buy? Ant bait broadcast treatment for the yard and a three pack of replacement toilet valves, among other things. 

 

Cable/Satellite/Internet – $48:

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. I paid two months worth of internet bills in February totaling $48.

 

Clothing/Shoes – $33:

I bought a new pair of shoes for me for $33. 

 

Gas – $28:

Two partial tanks of gas for our Hyundai Accent for $28. Our daughter drives the Hyundai to school four days per week so she uses about a tank of gas each month when school is in session.

 

Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $0:

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. I didn’t actually pay anything for dental insurance during February because the insurer has screwed up our billing pretty bad. I need to sit down with a spreadsheet and figure out the premiums we’ve actually paid since December compared to what we should have paid. 

 

Restaurants – $0:

No restaurants during February (other than a dozen meals on the cruise ship that were almost free).

 

 

 

 

 

Spending for 2025 – Year to Date

 

 

We spent $7,552 for the first two months of 2025. This annual spending is about $1,000 more than the budgeted $6,667 for two 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. 

It’s still very early in the year to worry about being slightly over budget so far. We had a big lumpy annual property tax bill in January that only comes once per year. Looking forward to the next few months, we’ll have a few medium-sized travel expenses like cruise deposits or other travel bookings. We’ll also have some dental expenses in March or April. And our annual homeowners insurance renewal in May along with the six month auto insurance bill. 

I think we have a decent chance to finish the year within our $40,000 annual budget. But if not, that’s okay too because our investments are consistently hovering above the $3,000,000 mark. We could conservatively spend about $90,000 per year if we really wanted to. 

 

Monthly Expense Summary for 2025:

 

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 – $7,552 (through 2/28/2025)

 

 

 

Net Worth: $3,361,000 (+$39,000)

Our net worth increased for the second month in a row to bring the total to $3,361,000. We added $39,000 to our net worth last month in spite of the overall US stock market declining by about 2%.

Fortunately I have an asset allocation with a decent mix of international and other investments that performed better than the US stock market index. So our gain for February was just over a 1% gain. It’s been a difficult decade or two for international investors but this month highlights how international investments can play a role in a diversified portfolio.

My international investments are also my answer to the concern of “what if the USA doesn’t maintain its position as the best large developed country in the world for the next 50 years?”. 

 

 

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

I’m really looking forward to my month at home. It’s a vacation from my vacations! Life here in Raleigh is pretty comfortable and easy. We have two cars and a decently large house by global standards.

All the good stores are 5 minutes away. Friends and family are not much further. We have a good kitchen and a well stocked pantry and fridge. For entertainment we have a firehose of streaming content from dozens of providers and a nearly unlimited amount of board games and video/computer games at our disposal. And of course a library full of interesting books that I’ve been meaning to read. 

If I get bored (which is basically impossible if you read that last paragraph) then I can start planning my next adventure. We are slowly filling in the missing pieces to our summer plans so there’s a lot to think about and research for those future trips. 

In the meantime, I’m ready for some peace and relaxation in the comfort of my own home. 

That’s it for me this month, folks. See you next month! 

 

 

Who’s ready for springtime?!!! 

 

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