The fall season is in full swing—and with it, a busy time of year for us. Travel, family, and all the tasks that go along with closing out the year in our personal finances and business. And so, our October update comes to you just a little later than normal—but, we hope with some enjoyable adventure and helpful insight. Check out our trip breakdown to see how we did Germany & Belgium on $28/person/day! Hint: we skipped most Oktoberfest festivals and spent time with family and friends.
For our monthly donation, our theme is creative art charities. You can read more about them and vote for your favorite in the poll below!
We track our income, spending, and savings each month to stay on our FIRE path and share it with you. Please keep reading to see our monthly updates, tips, and charity reviews.
Budget Update
In the Sankey diagram below, the income on the left matches our expenses on the right.
We’ll run through the income and expense sources for the month and remark on any interesting items.
Income Summary
Aside from our usual monthly income, here are some interesting anecdotes:
Dividends
Our quarterly dividends are something we use to make ends meet more and more these days. We anticipate significant dividend payments from our various stock holdings—most of it from Vanguard funds like VTSAX. This month’s dividends were auto reinvested (DRIP).
We earned $246 in total distributions.
Cashback
We use various online referral platforms, bonuses, etc. to earn cashback on purchases on certain activities. Some of our favorites are Rakuten and Swagbucks. Payouts often represents several months of earnings.
- Chris earned about $133 from RetailMeNot.
- Jenni earned about $30 through Ibotta.
We earned $163 in cashback.
Local Sales
We’re still finding occasional success upgrading our old gear or selling off promos via our local Facebook Marketplace/Craigslist. Related purchases appear in their expense sections below, too [for more details].
- Jenni recently “upgraded” to an all-in-one computer (a 27″ Apple iMac); this month she old her old monitor for $30
- We sold our Apple TV HD for $65 locally after upgrading to an Apple TV 4K ($51)
We earned $95 from local sales.
Expense Summary
From our $5,178 monthly budget, we saved and invested…nothing! Though we did plow some money into 401(k), this was really just moving money from one savings pocket to another—moving money from checking to 401(k).
After subtracting our credits and savings—we spent about $3,617 on living expenses.
That’s 76% of our FIRE budget from 2022 ($4,787/month).
Our income was pretty low this month, so we had to pull from checking to balance things out. Plus, we spent a good chunk of the month out of the country! Let’s break down some of the more exciting details.
Food & Dining
Our food expenses climbed as we restocked and traveled. We couldn’t skip out on those tasty Belgian delicacies!
Groceries
We saw a pretty big bump in grocery expenses this month—to $598. Some of this comes from traveling and trying to help stock our place. And some of it just comes from good deals at home where we loaded up on shelf stable items. We didn’t make any big habit changes.
Restaurants, Fast food, Alcohol & bars
Oof. At $306, our restaurant expenses were quite high this month. No surprise, this mainly came from multiple outings with family and friends while traveling in Germany. We also took a local friend out for their birthday and contributed to a fundraiser meal in our local community.
Another $136 went to quick treats and convenience foods while traveling.
Here’s just a taste of a variety of the chocolates, treats, snacks, and super savory meals we had throughout our trip:
We did visit a very lovely pub in Belgium, but most of our alcohol expenditures went to a social club membership (at home) for Jenni—which is really just an alcohol expense. Ha!
We spent $1,102 on food & dining this month.
Shopping
The never-ending cycle of upgrades continues…
Electronics & Software
- As mentioned in local sales income above, we upgraded our Apple TV HD to a 4K version for $51 (creating a $14 profit after a local sale of $65)
Clothing
- At just under $1, our clothing expense might the smallest entry we’ve recorded for a category…Jenni loves that she ended up getting a pair of clearance water shoes after free CVS cash for under a dollar.
We spent $54 on shopping this month.
Germany & Belgium Travel Summary
We took an 15-day trip to Europe’s Germany and Belgium from September 23 to October 7. The primary impetus for this trip was to celebrate Chris’s grandfather’s 90th birthday. Chris also has quite a bit of extended family in Germany so we an opportunity to spend time with several family members.
We left Germany on October 3 to make our way to Brussels and our flight home. This short trip was a mini getaway for us and an opportunity to explore Belgium a bit.
Let’s break down our trip budget.
We’ll include all expenses we incurred for the trip—even groceries, restaurants, and amusement. But we’ll skip expenses that we incurred during the trip that were not part of the trip (for example, our utility bill back home in Virginia).
Trip cost table
Let’s take a look at our total trip cost. In the table below, you’ll find four columns:
- Description: a summary of what the expense was for. We’ve included some basic geographical information for things like flights or hotels.
- Cost: our incurred expense in US dollars for the described line item. In some cases, this appears as zero. If a travel currency like hotel points, airline miles, or a credit card reward certificate covers the total expense, we record a zero here. Sometimes, there’s a minor fee in addition to using points/miles for surcharges or taxes.
- Rewards Points/Miles: we maximize our credit card rewards and frequent traveler currencies to cover the costs of our travel wherever possible. You’ll see a short description of the type of certificate or currency that we used.
- Estimated Value: when using a reward from the previous column to cover an expense, we record what we would have otherwise paid for the line item. This gives us a sense of our savings.
The table is generally in chronological order.
We still incurred expenses at home (mortgage, utilities, etc.)—but these do not appear as part of our trip costs.
| Description | Cost (USD, $) | Rewards Pts/Miles | Est. Value (USD, $) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flight—IAD→FRA/BRU→IAD (2x, Economy) | 42.11 | 53,869 Merrill Pts | 1,090.80 |
| Hotel: Frankfurt—1 night | 4.00 | 9,918 Chase UR | 148.78 |
| Hotel: Dusseldorf—1 night | 6.00 | 8,000 Hyatt Pts | 140.00 |
| Hotel: Cardo Marriott Brussels; 3 nights | 15.18 | 29,700 Chase UR | 445.51 |
| Rental car: Germany, 8 days | 18,137 Chase UR | 272.06 | |
| Gas & fuel (rental car) | 76.01 | ||
| Alcohol & bars | 13.25 | ||
| Dining: restaurants, fast food, coffee shops | 325.39 | ||
| Groceries | 96.92 | ||
| Amusement: Burg Eltz tickets | 31.39 | ||
| Public Transport | 220.33 | ||
| Gifts & souvenirs | 21.58 | ||
| Total | 852.16 | 119,624 Pts | 2,097.15 |
We *did* have phone eSIMs while in Europe but used previous credits to buy them for a few bucks each.
Trip cost discussion
$852. For a 15-day trip, this was crazy cheap. Let’s start off saying that a large portion of our savings on this trip won’t be replicable for a lot of people—we stayed in a family friend’s house—a Presbytery—for much of the trip. But no doubt, many of our readers have family and friends abroad they could visit and home base from to explore. Of course, chip in where you can even when they insist you can stay for free!
Aside from the free stay for 10 days, we spent most of our time socializing with family and friends. Lots of group meals. Visiting family, card games, and socializing obviously doesn’t cost much money.
Here’s a little sampling of our rooms if you’re curious about our stays—
Our bedroom and shared kitchen staying with family (most our stay was here):
And our fancy hotel in Brussels (the Cardo by Marriott):
As usual, we flew using credit card points to cover the majority of the flight cost for both of us. Chris’s Merrill card really hit a sweet spot with its 50k points equating to a $1,000 flight expense—where our flight was just over $1,000 for both of us roundtrip.
Jenni recently signed up for a Chase Sapphire Reserve (her second!) premium credit card. This allowed us to pool our Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points and redeem those for a value of 1.5 cents per point (instead of the typical 1:1). This covered multiple hotels and our rental car.
Summary—
For an 15-day, 5-hotel night trip, we spent $852. That’s cheap! It’s about $28/person per day. We used credit card points to avoid a massive portion of our expenses—flights, hotels, and car rentals. We estimate this cut our direct expenses by $2,097. We also spent a significant portion of the trip staying with friends and family.
ⓘ Curious about some of the other expenses that we didn’t address? We’ve written about every expense in this month’s diagram either in this post or in the past. Check out our previous budget updates for more detail or ask in the comments below!
How Much We Work
We like to keep track of how much time we spend doing work that is paid.
Let’s add this month to the list…
Design Note: A reader suggested we should collapse the hours worked and net worth history history tables below. They’ve started to get quite long after a handful of years! Let us know if this works well for you in the comments.
History of Monthly “Hours Worked”
| Month | Chris (Hours Worked) | Jenni (Hours Worked) |
|---|---|---|
| May 2020 | 41 | 108 |
| Jun 2020 | 38 | 96 |
| Jul 2020 | 36 | 120 |
| Aug 2020 | 39 | 48 |
| Sep 2020 | 27 | 76 |
| Oct 2020 | 26 | 104 |
| Nov 2020 | 27 | 57 |
| Dec 2020 | 28 | 57 |
| Jan 2021 | 25 | 102 |
| Feb 2021 | 24 | 104 |
| Mar 2021 | 24 | 106 |
| Apr 2021 | 23 | 85 |
| May 2021 | 17 | 29.75 |
| Jun 2021 | 19 | 66 |
| Jul 2021 | 21 | 30.25 |
| Aug 2021 | 23 | 16.5 |
| Sep 2021 | 26 | 28 |
| Oct 2021 | 22 | 49 |
| Nov 2021 | 21 | 51 |
| Dec 2021 | 64 | 27 |
| Jan 2022 | 32 | 80 |
| Feb 2022 | 29 | 63 |
| Mar 2022 | 14 | 70 |
| Apr 2022 | 15 | 21 |
| May 2022 | 14 | 36 |
| Jun 2022 | 6 | 12 |
| Jul 2022 | 13 | 45.5 |
| Aug 2022 | 15 | 96 |
| Sep 2022 | 12 | 54 |
| Oct 2022 | 14 | 34.5 |
| Nov 2022 | 12 | 72 |
| Dec 2022 | 11 | 16.5 |
| Jan 2023 | 10 | 88 |
| Feb 2023 | 11 | 81.5 |
| Mar 2023 | 12 | 47.5 |
| Apr 2023 | 8 | 1 |
| May 2023 | 16 | 100 |
| Jun 2023 | 10 | 109 |
| Jul 2023 | 12 | 48 |
| Aug 2023 | 16 | 54.5 |
| Sep 2023 | 9 | 20 |
| Oct 2023 | 14 | 22 |
| Nov 2023 | 15 | 22 |
| Dec 2023 | 16 | 12 |
| Jan 2024 | 12 | 61.25 |
| Feb 2024 | 14 | 28.5 |
| Mar 2024 | 16 | 61.5 |
| Apr 2024 | 12 | 22 |
| May 2024 | 8 | 19.5 |
| Jun 2024 | 18 | 19.5 |
| Jul 2024 | 14 | 44 |
| Aug 2024 | 18 | 81 |
| Sep 2024 | 15 | 20 |
| Oct 2024 | 51 | 18 |
Our time spent working continues as a mild background task. Jenni’s earnings went into 401(k) contributions.
Net Worth Update
Net worth is not our primary measurement and can understand it can be discouraging if you’re working yourself out of debt. We also understand it’s difficult to be transparent with our readers without divulging this information so we continue to do so.
Account breakdown
The market keeps chugging along and so do our investments. From a high level, our assets and liabilities are shown in the data table below as of October 31, 2024.
| Description | Value (USD, $) |
|---|---|
| 401(k) | 1,013,398 |
| Brokerage | 913,599 |
| Roth IRA | 194,234 |
| Traditional IRA | 24,355 |
| HSA | 60,179 |
| Real Estate | 441,100 |
| Mortgage | (135,287) |
| Miscellaneous Assets | 25,000 |
| Checking & Savings | 40,326 |
| Net Worth | 2,576,903 |
- Miscellaneous assets include specific investments we’ve made in physical assets (think collectibles) and treasury bonds
- Amounts do not reflect the value of the businesses Chris owns or their assets, which should appear as income to us over future years
- Jenni’s Prius is omitted
The S&P 500 was down about 1.0% for the month.
We were down about 0.6%. Considering we tend to slightly lag the market when it’s up, it makes sense that we beat the market when it’s down. Our investments are a bit more defensive as we’re in early retirement.
Overall, our net worth decreased by around $16K this month.
Net Worth History
| Date | Amount | % Change |
|---|---|---|
| July 2020 | $1,555,289 | – |
| August 2020 | $1,597,334 | 2.7% |
| September 2020 | $1,566,393 | (2.0%) |
| October 2020 | $1,568,182 | 0.01% |
| November 2020 | $1,720,113 | 9.6% |
| December 2020 | $1,810,864 | 5.3% |
| January 2021 | $1,860,996 | 2.8% |
| February 2021 | $1,878,154 | 0.9% |
| March 2021 | $1,918,269 | 2.1% |
| April 2021 | $2,010,849 | 4.8% |
| May 2021 | $2,049,213 | 1.9% |
| June 2021 | $2,093,896 | 2.2% |
| July 2021 | $2,092,153 | (0.1%) |
| August 2021 | $2,130,761 | 1.8% |
| September 2021 | $2,070,730 | (2.8%) |
| October 2021 | $2,151,272 | 3.9% |
| November 2021 | $2,095,273 | (2.6%) |
| December 2021 | $2,160,235 | 3.1% |
| January 2022 | $2,055,292 | (4.9%) |
| February 2022 | $2,058,001 | 0.01% |
| March 2022 | $2,134,428 | 3.7% |
| April 2022 | $1,968,069 | (7.8%) |
| May 2022 | $1,975,569 | 0.04% |
| June 2022 | $1,868,397 | (5.4%) |
| July 2022 | $1,975,608 | 5.7% |
| August 2022 | $1,878,352 | (5.2%) |
| September 2022 | $1,735,997 | (7.6%) |
| October 2022 | $1,820,287 | 4.9% |
| November 2022 | $1,920,635 | 5.5% |
| December 2022 | $1,866,513 | (2.8%) |
| January 2023 | $1,953,691 | 4.7% |
| February 2023 | $1,882,656 | (3.6%) |
| March 2023 | $1,969,566 | 4.6% |
| April 2023 | $1,981,934 | 0.6% |
| May 2023 | $1,995,247 | 0.7% |
| June 2023 | $2,092,479 | 4.9% |
| July 2023 | $2,189,821 | 4.7% |
| August 2023 | $2,140,296 | (2.2%) |
| September 2023 | $2,042,865 | (4.6%) |
| October 2023 | $2,015,648 | (1.3%) |
| November 2023 | $2,157,404 | 7.0% |
| December 2023 | $2,261,458 | 4.8% |
| January 2024 | $2,296,269 | 1.5% |
| February 2024 | $2,365,110 | 3.0% |
| March 2024 | $2,434,250 | 2.9% |
| April 2024 | $2,371,284 | (2.6%) |
| May 2024 | $2,423,205 | 2.2% |
| June 2024 | $2,472,353 | 2.0% |
| July 2024 | $2,513,877 | 1.7% |
| August 2024 | $2,560,215 | 1.8% |
| September 2024 | $2,592,558 | 1.3% |
| October 2024 | $2,576,903 | (0.6%) |
Previous Donation Winner
Before researching the topical of menstrual equity and education, we didn’t realize how complex the period problem really was around the world. Having the supplies one needs to manage their menstruation allows women and girls to attend work and school every day of the month. These essential supplies provided by organizations like our winner, Days for Girls International, give women just a little more of a chance to succeed.
Our Reader’s Fund seeks to leverage the principles of FIRE to build a lifetime of giving.
Thank you for your participation in our polls over the last 51 months. We’ve given $6,700 to deserving charities with your help in deciding which organizations to donate to.
Polls are now open for our next round of candidates: Creative Arts Charities.
Charity Round-Up
Being able to appreciate a piece of art and think. “Wow! That is amazing.” can help take your mind off some of the crazy things happening around the world. Keeping the arts funded and our youth engaged in creating all types of art is how we will continue to find new talents artists. This is what the following charities are all about!
Each of the following organizations have excellent charity ratings. We invite you to learn more about great work around the world and join us in donating to one of them by casting your vote.
Summaries below include the impact metrics and a link to their Guidestar profile which details the nonprofit’s operations and transparency.
1) ART 180, Inc.
Why? To use art as an amplifier to express youths’ messages and raise their voices in a safe environment.
Where? Richmond, Virginia
What? ART 180, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that is letting kids do a 180 to change their lives through art. Over the past 26 years, they’ve provided Atlas—a space to gather, a community to learn, and the mentorship to express one’s feeling through art and experiences. Their free after school programing removes financial and transportation barriers. They work in partnership with the Richmond Public Schools and local artists to lead 12 semester-long programs to learn technical art skills while exploring the issues that affect their communities. These opportunities allow youth to express their feelings and have their talents be recognized during a public showcase.
2) Girls Write Now, Inc.
Why? To train the next generation of writers to share their voices and stories shaping our culture, impacting industries, and inspiring change.
Where? The United States
What? Girls Write Now, Inc. is a nonprofit creative writing organization matching girls and gender-expansive students with professional female writers as mentors. During weekly meetings throughout the year, students attend writing workshops to strengthen their skills and develop their portfolios. They are exposed to a wide range of genre and media, including film editing, podcasting, and screenwriting. After a year of developing their writing skills, students can move up into the publishing program. Along side their mentor, girls learn the ins and out of publishing in a variety of writing forms. One example is this original short story, just published on YouTube, “A Passenger’s Library”.
3) Creative Art Works
Why? Making art makes connections that can help create a better tomorrow by empowering young people today.
Where? New York
Our Notes: Creative Art Works is a nonprofit organization helping young people develop their creative art talents. These young people get to experience what it is like design and paint large-scale murals and even get paid for it through their Public Art Youth Employment Program. This collaboration with the community brings the everyone together. Both of their in-school and out-of school art programs brings art back to students whose art classes were removed from their public education programs in New York City.
Nonprofit poll
After reviewing the list above, please take a moment to vote for which nonprofit you think will put funds to use in the best way.
(Have trouble using or seeing the poll above? Some reader tools or apps may not display it. View this page in a browser or use this link to our Reader Fund page which has a copy of the poll!)
Thank you for taking the time to vote!
One of our primary goals with TicTocLife is building a stream of giving within the FIRE community and that starts with knowledge.
Want to hear about the results? Sign up for our free FIRE Insider newsletter! We send it out every few weeks and include the monthly poll results and donation winners. You can see an archive of the FIRE Insider and sign up here!
What’s Next
November will be filled with family and—hopefully—a little relaxation. Chris’s side hobby of refurbishing electronics and cycling them into our local community will continue to suck up some of his time. And, we’ll be working to plan our December island getaway.
Also, Chris is still working on other posts:
- Inflation bond (I Bond) experience
- Our transition from Intuit’s Mint budgeting app to a different tool
- The big annual FIRE budget post for 2023
- Credit card rewards points breakdown—as suggested by a reader!
Lastly, the holidays are approaching—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and more. We’re trying to catch up on writing, life, and more. No doubt, just like you. Thanks for being here and following along on our journey!
What do you have planned for winter holidays?
Let us know in the comments or on Threads and X (Twitter)!
