April 2025 Early Retirement Update – Springtime Animals Edition

Welcome back to another monthly update from Root of Good! We spent most of April at home enjoying the springtime flora and fauna. But we also managed to squeeze in a week in the Caribbean on board the Holland America Rotterdam cruise ship. 

Right now we are just a few days away from commencing a six week period of busy travel that brings us to the west coast of the USA, then Alaska, Europe, and at the end of June, back to the Caribbean. We’ll be back home for a few days here and there but mostly on the road during that timeframe. 

I’ve spent a big part of April taking care of “business” at home. Working on financial planning and filing taxes, tackling some chores and repairs around the house, and visiting with family and friends. Since we’re doing a lot of traveling, I’ve been doing a lot of research and travel planning as well. I’m basically a part-time travel agent these days (with a customer base of one very demanding client – me!).  

On to our financial progress. April was a decent month for our finances overall. Our net worth increased very slightly by $4,000 to end the month at $3,351,000. Our April income of $3,581 was almost enough to cover our spending of $4,261 for the month.

Let’s jump into the details from last month.

 

Income

Investment income totaled $868 in April. 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 $360 for the month. This represents an average month of blog income. 

My early retirement lifestyle consulting income (“consulting”) was $1,156 last month. This represents six hours of consulting. I’m very happy with the last two months of $1,000+ in revenue from consulting. During April I had a technical hiccup with my email and website server for several weeks so it appears I may have lost out on a client or two that contacted me. So far May is starting off well, but I anticipate lower revenues for May and June because I will not be as available to conduct consulting sessions.  

Tradeline sales income totaled $250 last month. This is a bit lower than recent months but I know the exact amount will fluctuate month-to-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. 

For last month, my “deposit income” totaled $50. Of that total, $10 was 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!). 

The other $40 in deposit income was a class action settlement check from a lawsuit against Facebook because… Well they breached my rights in some very egregious manner I am sure, and I feel like $40 is more than fair compensation for my injuries! 

My bank and credit card bonuses totaled $895 last month. I signed up for a US Bank Business Leverage card and received a $750 sign up bonus plus another $145 from the 2% cash back on the spending I put on the card. 

 

 

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 April expenses:

 

 

In total, we spent $4,261 during the month of April which is about $1,000 more than our regularly budgeted $3,333 per month (or $40,000 per year). Healthcare/medical and travel were the two largest categories from last month. 

 

Detailed breakdown of spending:

 

Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $1,827:

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 paid $19 during April which is less than the normal monthly charge because the insurance company messed up the billing earlier during 2025. 

We had several dental visits and procedures completed during the month of April totaling $1,817. That’s after insurance paid for a portion of the procedures. Dental care remains the most expensive part of our health/medical expenses. We have one more similarly large payment during May or June and then hopefully our dental expenses drop back down close to $0 for the remainder of the year. 

 

 

 

Travel – $857:

Last month’s travel spending was a mix of several different expenses.

I spent $99 on the annual fee for a new American Airlines credit card. The sign up bonus on that card earned us 70,000 American Aadvantage miles which is more than enough to pay for a round trip flight to Europe. 

Another small charge was the $8 in convenience fees I paid so that I could use a credit card to pay my $400 quarterly estimated taxes for the State of North Carolina. 

The largest part of our travel spending during April came from travel arrangements to get to Europe for a couple of upcoming cruises.

• taxes for four “free” one-way award flights home from Europe: $400
• 2x United Kingdom ETA visas (which aren’t “really” visas but they still cost money): $26
• Round trip train tickets from London to the coast for two: $98

Other April travel expenses included incidental expenses for our weeklong Caribbean cruise.  We spent $31 for Uber/Lyfts between the Ft. Lauderdale Airport and the cruise port in Ft. Lauderdale. Included in that total is a $10 discount for using my Chase Sapphire Reserve Card for the Lyft ride. While onboard, we spent $195 on the mandatory gratuities plus some small purchases in the gift shop. 

 

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 – $789:

We spent $789 on groceries last month. This represents a pretty normal month of groceries for us. Inflation on food is way up over the past few years, so the days of a $500 or $600 monthly grocery bill are long gone (at least while our kids are still living with us). 

 

 

Taxes – $415:

I paid our North Carolina quarterly estimated tax bill of $400 during April. The other $15 in tax expense came from the $15 FreeTaxesUSA fee to file my state income tax online. 

 

Utilities – $247:

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

The electric bill was $108 last month. We had to use the air conditioning a small amount during the April billing period and that usage will increase as we proceed through the warmer spring and summer months. 

There was no April natural gas bill because I paid it in full during the last few days of March. 

 

Gas – $50:

Two tanks of gas for our Hyundai Accent for $50 total. Through the end of April, our daughter had to drive to the NC State University campus about 7 miles away. Now that summer is here, she’s finishing up her degree with a few online courses so she won’t be driving nearly as much. The main car usage is back to running errands and social outings or vacations for us. 

 

 

Clothing/Shoes – $29:

A visit to the thrift shop for some new (or “new to us”) clothes. 

 

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. 

 

Restaurants – $17:

Mrs. Root of Good went out to lunch with her friends last month for $17. 

 

Automotive – $7:

The windshield wiper spray nozzle on top of the hood stopped working last month. When I went to inspect it, the plastic nozzle fragmented into several pieces. For $7, I found a replacement nozzle on ebay that was easy to install and it’s working fine now and only took a few minutes to install.

 

 

 

 

Spending for 2025 – Year to Date

 

 

We spent $13,948 for the first four months of 2025. This annual spending is slightly over our budgeted $13,333 for four 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 aren’t really trying to be super frugal these days, so if the spending comes in higher than our budget, that’s okay.

 

 

Right now we are continuing our plan to spend weeks at a time traveling all over the world. During the remainder of 2025, we’ll be spending eight weeks cruising around Alaska, Scotland, Ireland, and the Baltic Sea while visiting dozens of ports along the way. We also have two cruises booked with our kids during the summer. And to wrap up the year, we’re doing a cruise through the Panama Canal from Fort Lauderdale to the west coast of the USA. Between all that travel, some down time in Raleigh, and a few holidays and special events, we’re just about booked up for 2025. 

However I’m already looking at interesting trip ideas for 2026, and won’t hesitate to spend some money on more trips for next year. But hopefully I can do some travel hacking to keep the out of pocket expenses to a minimum. 

In May, we have our annual home insurance bill and our six-month auto insurance bill due, which will be about $2,500 in total. Plus some more dental expenses. It’s looking like another month of big spending. Will we end up back on budget at some point during the summer? Who knows! 

 

 

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 – $13,948 (through 4/30/2025)

 

Net Worth: $3,351,000 (+$4,000)

Our net worth increased slightly by $4,000 to end the month at $3,351,000. 

The last two months we’ve experienced a $14,000 drop in March and a $4,000 gain in April. Not exactly the roller coaster that you see portrayed in the media, when you look at our month to month investment returns instead of daily numbers. And in reality, monthly numbers are meaningless too. I just include them in here for entertainment purposes so there’s filler text between all the vacation and animal pictures. 

 

 

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

Big changes coming up? Or not? 

Our oldest two kids graduate from college this year. One daughter just graduated (congrats!) and our other daughter completes her degree at the end of July. They are still searching for jobs and have no imminent plans to move out. Our son, the youngest child, still has several more years of K-12 education so he’ll be at home for a while.

 

 

We went ahead and made summer travel plans based on guesses about when our older two kids would have school or jobs and not be able to travel with us. They will both find jobs eventually but right now they don’t have any real leads. 

Hopefully the job market picks up for them. In the meantime it’s nice to have them around. We enjoy them being full time house sitters and providing rides to the airport. 

 

Well that’s it for me this month. I’ll be traveling till mid-June so the next monthly update will be delayed quite a bit. See you next time! 

 

Who is looking forward to summertime? 

 

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