Welcome again to Root of Good, people! We landed in Poland a month in the past and we have now been having fun with this new-to-us nation fairly a bit. We began our journey in Krakow and made our manner south to the Tatra mountains and Zakopane close to the border of Slovakia.
As I write this, we’re within the southwestern a part of Poland within the Klodzko Valley very near the Czech Republic. Over the subsequent few weeks we’ll head north towards Gdansk with a number of stops alongside the best way.
On to our monetary progress. June was a very good month general for our funds. Our web value dipped barely by $16,000 to finish the month at $3,120,000. Our revenue of $13,376 exceeded our spending of $5,889 for the month of June by a large margin.
Let’s soar into the small print from final month.
Earnings
Funding revenue totaled $10,684 in June. Our fairness index funds and ETFs pay dividends quarterly on the finish of March, June, September, and December. Because of this, we had a bigger than regular quantity of funding revenue final month. Right here’s extra on our dividend investments.
Weblog revenue totaled $924 for the month. This represents a barely above common month of weblog revenue.
My early retirement way of life consulting revenue (“consulting”) was $360 final month. That represents two hours of consulting work in the course of the month.
Tradeline gross sales revenue totaled $525 in June. That may be a nice month for my tradeline gross sales. I count on the subsequent month or two to be equally excessive. 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 submit and in my July 2021 month-to-month submit. Most years I make round $4,000 to $6,000 in alternate for lending out my stellar credit score historical past from half a dozen bank cards.
For final month, my “deposit revenue” was $12. The deposit revenue got here from money again and incentive bonuses from the Rakuten.com and Mrrebates.com on-line procuring portals (a few of which was earned from you readers signing up via these hyperlinks).
Should you join Rakuten via this hyperlink and make a qualifying $25 buy via Rakuten, you’ll get a $10 enroll bonus (or extra!).
My “Financial institution/Bank card bonus” revenue was $869 final month. I just lately signed up for a number of US Financial institution Enterprise Leverage playing cards and the $750 bonus from the primary one posted throughout June, together with about $119 additional money again from the spending that I placed on the cardboard.
Youtube revenue was $0 final month. Youtube solely pays out if you hit $100 in gathered income. Lately, my Youtube earnings have been just below $50 monthly on common, so I solely receives a commission each three months.
Right here is the Youtube channel for the curious. It’s random journey movies, birds, youngsters, and a few DIY movies. There are just a few predominant movies that herald a lot of the site visitors (and income!).
Should you’re concerned with monitoring your revenue and bills like I do, then take a look at Empower Private Dashboard, previously generally 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 via Empower Private Dashboard. We’ve got accounts in every single place, and Empower Private Dashboard makes it very easy to verify on every part at one time.
Empower Private Dashboard can also be a stable software for funding administration. Retaining observe of our complete funding portfolio takes two clicks. Should you haven’t signed up for the free Empower Private Dashboard service, test it out as we speak (overview right here).
Monitoring spending was one of many vital 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 June bills:
In complete, we spent $5,889 in the course of the month of June which is about $2,500 greater than our recurrently budgeted $3,333 monthly (or $40,000 per 12 months). Insurance coverage and journey have been the best two spending classes final month.
Detailed breakdown of spending:
Insurance coverage – $2,635:
Our annual owners insurance coverage invoice of $1,335 got here due in June. As a result of inflation, the premiums have skyrocketed by virtually 100% in contrast to a couple years in the past.
Our six month auto premium has additionally gone up fairly a bit. I consider a lot of the enhance is because of including our two teen drivers. The six month premium was $1,300 at this renewal.
As our teenagers achieve further years of driving expertise, the insurance coverage re-rates them to a decrease threat class. So the present premiums ought to be the best they are going to ever be since our oldest child will quickly have two years of driving expertise and get a fee discount consequently.
Journey – $1,813:
Our journey spending of $1,813 represents every part we’ve spent in Poland for the 23 days of June that we spent right here.
I didn’t break down the journey spending in positive element, however I’ve a tough estimate of the place that $1,813 journey spending went:
- $413 – rental automobile and gasoline
- $50 – parking
- $100 – Ubers whereas in Krakow
- $400 – eating places
- $500 – groceries
- $350 – tickets to points of interest, nationwide parks, museums, and castles
We’re spending extra freely than we often do. If one thing seems mildly attention-grabbing we’ll pay to go see or do it. Not an excessive amount of disappointment to this point with this method. We’ve taken an analogous method with eating places. Eating out and takeout are low-cost sufficient that we will take pleasure in restaurant meals with out breaking the finances.
Get free journey like us
In case you are concerned with getting free journey out of your bank card like I do, contemplate the Chase Ink Limitless or Chase Ink Money enterprise playing cards (my referral hyperlink). Proper now, the Chase Ink enterprise playing cards provide an above common $750 to $1000 value of Chase Final Rewards factors that may be redeemed immediately for $750 in money. I simply signed up for an additional new Ink card to snag certainly one of these nice bonus provides.
Chase is fairly liberal relating to “what’s a enterprise”. Should you 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 take advantage of the 75,000 Chase Final Rewards factors by transferring them to my Chase Sapphire Reserve card (additionally providing a 60,000 level enroll bonus proper now). With the Sapphire Reserve card, I can get 1.5x the factors worth by reserving cruises, flights, motels, or rental vehicles via their journey portal. Or 1.25x worth by reimbursing myself for groceries. That turns the 75,000 factors into $1,125 of free journey or $937.50 of free groceries. 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 fall cruises. Or I can switch these Final rewards factors to over a dozen journey companions’ airline/lodge packages 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 enroll bonus after spending $4,000 within the first three months. The bonus is paid within the type of 75,000 bonus factors which you could redeem towards any journey purchases from anyplace. Then you definitely 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 charge. However they reward you yearly with a straightforward to make use of $300 journey low cost plus $100 value of factors. Collectively, that makes $400 they offer you yearly which fully offsets the annual charge. One other profit value mentioning: you’ll be able to add as much as 4 licensed customers totally free, they usually additionally get all the advantages of the Enterprise X card together with the precious airport lounge entry. We used this perk to “reward” a pair of Enterprise X playing cards with airport lounge entry to my brother in regulation and his spouse to make use of on their household journey again residence to Cambodia final April with their two younger youngsters.
For the reason that annual charge is offset in full by journey credit annually, I personally plan on conserving the Enterprise X card eternally because the card advantages are so nice.
Electronics – $520:
We had a really unlucky exhausting drive failure throughout Could. 4 years of pictures have been worn out with out a full backup of most of them. So we despatched the exhausting drive off for knowledge restoration. I paid $520 for knowledge restoration companies and the corporate managed to get well 100% of our knowledge. Over two terabytes of pictures and movies.
We now have at the very least 2 full copies of all of our pictures and different invaluable knowledge. And we intend to take care of this degree of safety going ahead to forestall future knowledge losses.
Utilities – $304:
We spent $147 on our water/sewer/trash invoice final month.
The pure gasoline invoice was $25. All through the summer time, our pure gasoline invoice ought to be very low because it’s just for heating water. Moreover, utilization can be decrease since there’ll solely be one or two individuals residing in our Raleigh home throughout a lot of the summer time.
The electrical energy invoice was $133 in June. The summer time cooling season is effectively underway and our electrical invoice displays that. I think about will probably be over $200 for a month or two in the course of the summer time given the a lot increased value of electrical energy now because of inflation.
Taxes – $300:
Our $300 quarterly North Carolina estimated tax invoice got here due in June.
Groceries – $242:
The grocery spending of $242 principally displays our spending the primary week of June whereas we have been nonetheless in Raleigh. Our oldest daughter stayed in Raleigh this summer time and we cowl her grocery payments, so there’s a small quantity of spending for her within the June grocery complete.
I embrace our abroad grocery spending within the “Journey” class of bills. We aren’t as cautious about searching for gross sales and getting offers whereas we’re shopping for groceries abroad. And we attempt a number of new issues. So I lump the groceries whereas touring into our general journey finances.
Healthcare/Medical/Dental – $37:
Our present 2024 medical health insurance is free, because of very beneficiant Reasonably priced Care Act subsidies that we obtain because of our low ~$48,000 per 12 months Adjusted Gross Earnings.
Our 2024 dental insurance coverage plan prices $37 in premiums monthly. We picked a plan from Truassure via the healthcare.gov alternate. The dental insurance coverage does a very good job of masking routine cleanings, exams, and x-rays plus most of the price of primary procedures like fillings.
Dwelling Enchancment – $29:
Some insect repellent for our timber and shrubs. Bought shortly earlier than we left Raleigh for the summer time.
Cable/Satellite tv for pc/Web – $11:
We typically pay $25 monthly for an area lowered fee bundle because of having a decrease revenue and having youngsters. 50 mbit/s obtain, 10 mbit/s add. For the final a number of years, the price of the web service was quickly lowered to $0 because of the “Reasonably priced Connectivity Program”.
Now that the funding for the Reasonably priced Connectivity Program has ended, we lastly received a invoice for our web service. It was solely $11 for June because the ACP funding lined a portion of the invoice. Going ahead, we pays the total $25 month-to-month web invoice.
Fuel – $0:
No regular gasoline spending for the month of June. I did purchase a half tank for our rental automobile in Poland. Nonetheless I included that within the “journey” finances class.
Spending for 2024 – 12 months to Date
We spent $16,580 for the primary six months of 2024. This annual spending is about $3,500 lower than the budgeted $20,000 for six months per our $40,000 annual early retirement finances. I haven’t elevated our annual finances for inflation in a decade, so sooner or later I must revisit the finances numbers. Up to now, so good! No want to present ourselves a increase if we’re managing simply positive inside the present finances.
As I discussed in April, our youngsters’ faculty prices are fully paid for by their monetary support to this point. So faculty spending ought to stay moderately modest all through the remainder of 2024 into 2025. And it seems that each of our older youngsters are on observe to complete their bachelors levels in 2025.
The wildcard spending for 2024 can be some upcoming dental work for Mrs. Root of Good. We nonetheless don’t know what this can appear to be however we’ll discover out extra within the fall as soon as we return residence from our summer time journey. At the very least we’re working $3,500 beneath our finances, so any massive dental bills received’t make our complete annual spending fully out of line for the 12 months.
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 – $16,580 (via 6/30/2024)
Web Value: $3,120,000 (-$16,000)
Our web value dropped $16,000 to finish the month at $3,120,000. That’s a reasonably modest drop of a few half of a p.c of our general web value. We’re nonetheless above the psychologically vital $3 million greenback mark.
For the curious, our web value reported above contains our residence worth (which is absolutely paid off). I worth the home at $300,000, which might be what we’d web after gross sales bills. Nonetheless, please be aware that I don’t contemplate my residence 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
As this submit goes dwell, we can be getting into the second month of our summer time adventures in Poland. Up to now it’s going effectively and never a number of disagreeable surprises. After the primary week and a half within the metropolis of Krakow, we have now spent the final three weeks within the countryside in smaller, quieter villages.
Having a rental automobile makes the journey a lot extra enjoyable and simpler logistically. No planes, trains, or buses to catch. On the mornings that we go away one airbnb or lodge and go to the subsequent one, we leisurely get up at 8 or 9 am, take pleasure in a cup of espresso, and pack our gear into the tiny trunk of our Toyota Yaris. We’re out the door by 11 am and often have one to a few hours of driving to get to our subsequent place.
Normally we’ll discover someplace neat to cease for the day or seize lunch alongside the best way. Principally simply take it simple and benefit from the surroundings all through the drive. I’d name this a luxurious however we solely paid $17 per day for this very nice (however small!) rental automobile with automated transmission.
On our longest drive from simply exterior of Auschwitz to our citadel lodge in Otmuchow, I checked the field on my Google Maps to set the path to “keep away from highways”. This turned what would have been roughly two hours of freeway driving into a 3 hour journey via the rolling countryside at a a lot slower tempo.
Fewer vehicles zipping by us. As a substitute, extra quaint villages, cows, wildflowers, and farm fields exterior our automobile home windows. This was a terrific alternative in hindsight and one we hope to proceed if our schedule permits us throughout our future drives via Poland.
Generally you simply need to go your individual manner and select “the highway much less taken” (to borrow an idea from Robert Frost).
Effectively that’s it for this month’s replace. I hope you loved the pics from our journey. See you subsequent month!
How is you summer time going? I heard it’s fairly sizzling in a number of america proper now!
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