July 2025 Early Retirement Update – British Isles Cruise Edition

Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! I’m back home in Raleigh for a few days between trips so I’ll give an update on what we’re up to. 

We just returned from Europe where we spent two and a half weeks in late July and early August cruising around the British Isles, Ireland, Isle of Man, and northern Europe. We also had a full day in London before our cruise to explore the city. 

The itinerary for our July/August cruise had some overlap with our June British Isles cruise however we still made it to many new ports of call this time around. The weather was also much nicer in July and August. 

In the next couple of days we hit the road (skies? waves?) again for a week-long Caribbean cruise with two of our kids. Our middle child just graduated college and doesn’t have a job yet, so we’re squeezing in a short family vacation with her before she gets busy with work. When we return to Raleigh, it’s back to school for our son who will begin his last year of middle school. 

On to our financial progress. July was a great month for our finances in every regard. Our net worth increased by $41,000 to end the month at $3,638,000. Our July income of $7,163 was way more than enough to cover our spending of $1,992 for the month.

Let’s jump into the details from last month.

 

Income

Investment income totaled $5,414 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 at the very beginning of July. Here’s more on our dividend investments.

Blog income totaled $548 for last month. This represents fairly average blog income. 

My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $0 during last month. Things have definitely slowed down in my consulting business. I don’t know if folks are less interested in early retirement or if it’s just a summertime slowdown. I’ve been pretty busy traveling anyway so booking zero hours last month worked out well given my schedule. 

Tradeline sales income totaled $625 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. 

My “deposit income” totaled $21. 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 $555 last month. Of the total, $300 came from some Chase spending bonuses. The other $255 was from the Pay Yourself Back feature on my Chase Sapphire Reserve card. I reimbursed myself for $255 of grocery purchases during July. 

 

 

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 July expenses:

 

 

In total, we spent $1,992 last month which is about $1,300 less than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Groceries and travel were the top two spending categories from last month.

 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

 

Groceries – $836:

Mrs. Root of Good and I were in town for three and a half weeks of July. And our kids were here the entire month. Our grocery spending totaled $836 during that time period. It was a pretty typical month of grocery spending. 

 

 

Travel – $528:

The biggest bit of travel spending in July was paying the taxes, fees, and gratuities for our daughter’s ticket for our August cruise. We held off paying for her ticket until the last minute since we didn’t know if she would be able to make the cruise given uncertainties with her potential work schedule. She doesn’t have a job yet so she’s free to join us on the cruise next week. $323 was the total for her cruise costs. 

I booked some flights on Frontier to get us home after the cruise but it only cost $3 out of pocket. I used up the remaining $209 of my annual Capital One Venture X travel credit to pay for the bulk of the flight home for the four of us. 

The remaining $201 of July travel spending was for our Europe cruise that included:

• a bunch of ubers/taxis
• a pair of round trip intercity train tickets for London to Dover, UK
• local transit fares throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland
• admission fees
• two light meals in London (including fish and chips in a pub!)

 

We typically skip the pricey excursions offered by the cruise ship and instead rely on some combination of walking, transit, or uber/taxis. In most ports this costs us $5-25 total to get around for the day.

One guest told us that the ship was charging $209 per person for an “excursion” on a steam train across the Isle of Man that we booked ourselves for $16. However we did have to walk 10 minutes from the port to get to the train station. I don’t mind getting paid $195 for a 10 minute walk! 

 

 

 

 

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!). 

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. 

Or consider the revamped Chase Sapphire Reserve card with the highest sign up bonus ever of 100,000 Ultimate Reward points plus $500 in travel credit. The higher annual fee of $795 comes with some added travel benefits that can more than offset the annual fee if you travel a decent amount. Plus the sign up bonus is worth $1500-2000 depending on how you use the bonus! ***This higher sign up offer ends August 21, 2025!!***

 

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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. 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.

 

 

 

 

Utilities – $426:

We spent $121 on our water/sewer/trash bill last month.

The electric bill was $283 for July. That’s mostly air conditioner usage. It was incredibly hot and humid last month. Fortunately the bills drop quite a bit by September. 

The natural gas bill for last month totaled $22. Most of that is the monthly connection charge. Just a few dollars for the actual gas consumed by the water heater.

 

Gas – $61:

A tank of gas for our Hyundai Accent and a tank of gas for our minivan.

 

 

Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $56:

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 prepaid an extra $24 for my dental insurance in July to cover two extra months. Truassure has majorly screwed up my bill and they wouldn’t take less than 3 months of premium payments online. Frustrating company to deal with but the insurance itself is a good value (but is it worth the headache?).

 

Restaurants – $47:

We got takeout two times during July totaling $47. For one of those purchases I used up some gift cards and Doordash credits from my Chase Sapphire Reserve card.

 

 

Home Improvement – $41:

$41 for multiple orders from Home Depot. They have free shipping on almost everything including small $1-2 items. I got some heavy duty staples, a 100 pack of cable staples, a storage container, a bucket, and a three pack of furnace filters. 

 

Cable/Satellite/Internet – $0:

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. I prepaid the internet bill in June so the total spent in July was $0. 

 

 

 

Spending for 2025 – Year to Date

 

 

We spent $24,132 during the first seven months of 2025. This annual spending is about $800 over our budgeted $23,333 for the first seven 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. 

We don’t have many major planned expenses throughout the rest of 2025, so we might get back on budget at some point. I plan to book a lot more travel for 2025 and 2026 but most of that should be free from the credit card points and frequent flyer miles I have accumulated.  

 

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 – $24,132 (through 7/31/2025)

new slideshow format I’m trying out:

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Net Worth: $3,638,000 (+$41,000)

Our net worth increased by $41,000 during last month to end July at $3,638,000. 

One of my favorite parts of the FIRE lifestyle is going on a cruise around Europe for two weeks while my portfolio passively makes $41,000 for me. I know I won’t make that much every month from my investments, but it’s not too far off from what I expect on average. 

At a 9% rate of return I expect around $25,000 per month of portfolio gains on average. Of course there is always month-to-month volatility so it’s more like $50,000 up or down most months. With the long term trend being upwards. 

 

 

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.

 

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Closing thoughts

Life is good. Our oldest daughter is fully employed after graduating college earlier in the year. Our middle child just graduated college a few weeks ago at age 18, and will hopefully land a job soon. Our son is about to return to school in a week where he will finish up middle school this year. 

Financial freedom has granted us the joy of traveling wherever our hearts desire, without obsessing over the price tag. The past few months have been a whirlwind of adventures, but as the school year resumes, we’ll savor more time at home. That said, we’re already planning several exciting trips over the next six months.

 

 

As summer winds down, I’m reflecting on another fulfilling year of early retirement. This August marks 12 years since I stepped away from my engineering career in 2013, a career that spanned just nine years. It’s remarkable to think that my retirement has outlasted my working years. Over these 12 years, we’ve watched our net worth triple, explored dozens of countries with our children, and celebrated as two of them graduated college. Our kids are thriving, and I’m filled with gratitude for the journey.

Here’s to many more decades of retirement filled with the freedom to “do nothing” in the most delightful way possible while embracing whatever adventures come next!

Okay folks, that’s it for me for this update! 

 

Ready for fall to arrive? Did you have a good summer?

 

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