Racing, Tricks, and Strudel (Oct. 2025 Update)

October might have been the highlight of our fall. We love Halloween (and conducted a little experiment we’ll mention in the Grocery section below!), but the thing that made it special was catching up with loads of friends and family throughout the month. Once again, it’s that flexible schedule that remains so valuable to us in this FIRE life.

For our monthly donation, our theme is childhood charities. You can read more about the three charities we’re considering 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. 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

We’re back to a little lower income this month as we spent less time working and Jenni’s entire paycheck went to 401(k).

Dividends
Just a little DRIP from a legacy individual stock Chris still owns this month. We anticipate significant dividend payments from our various stock holdings—most of them from Vanguard funds like VTSAX. More than half of our distributions were automatically reinvested in our tax-advantaged accounts.

We earned $335 in total distributions.

Tax Refund
Virginia decided to award its tax payers with a small rebate this year. Joint returns earned back $400, which we received. This was a flat rebate that just about everyone earned if they paid some tax in 2024. We paid very little.

We received $400 in rebates. 

Expense Summary

From our $5,481 monthly budget, we saved and invested $2,235 dollars.

After subtracting our credits, savings, and donations—we spent about $3,235 on living expenses.

That’s 68% of our FIRE budget from 2022 ($4,787/month).

Let’s break down some of the more exciting details this month.

Food & Dining

As in recent months, our food expenses are fairly stable as we’ve been home for a longer stretch.

Groceries
We occasionally stock up when deals are good.We did that a lot this month with promos from UberEats, DoorDash, Instacart, and more. We use the “pick up” option in the apps to pay close to the in-store prices and use promos (like 30% off $50+ for example) to cut our expenses alongside discounted gift cards. Our pantry and freezer are packed!

For Halloween this year, we went pretty big. We bought about 18 pounds of candy and gave out nearly all of it on the big night! We had hundreds of kids. Each year, we gather with our neighbors to have some community fellowship and to make it easier on kids to come get a treat…or a trick! This year, Chris decided to see what choice kids might make when selecting their treat from us. He offered up two pieces of fun size candy OR a box of classic Mac & Cheese OR a microwave popcorn.

And what do you think was gone first?

The Mac & Cheese! Followed shortly by the popcorn… We started with about 20 blue boxes and 15 bags of popcorn. They were all gone in about 20 minutes. Kids loved it! They had fun with the idea, laughed, asked their parents if it was OK and generally set smiles off on all of us.

Another part of our grocery expenses this month included a trip to a nearby orchard! We’ve managed to visit every other year, roughly, within the recent past. Beautiful views mixed with fun apple picking turn a grocery expense into a little event. Plus, we drag some friends out to join us!

Restaurants, Fast food, Alcohol & bars
Our local British pub hosted us and another couple we hadn’t seen for a while. We figured it was a good excuse to check the place out and have some classic fish and chips together. Aside from that, we had lots of small visits to McDonald’s (we know!—but their Monopoly promotion is amazing for free food!) and a pizza night with family.

We spent $741 on food & dining this month. 

Home

Our typical home expenses (mortgage, HOA, insurance) were unchanged this month. But, our little home projects continue.

Home Improvement

Lighting
Our attic is partially finished—something that came with our place when we bought it in 2013. There’s pretty poor lighting in the storage closets so Chris made good use of some touch sensitive sticky light pucks that are battery operated. With LED, they should last a good long while and are rechargeable. Much better than dealing with extending the knob & tube wiring for a proper light!

The pucks were about $24 for three on Amazon with a special deal.

Laundry parts were $38.

We spent $72 on home improvement this month.

Expense Conclusion

While that covers the big stuff, we still had a few random things or small purchases to mention that might be of interest.

Amusement
One of Chris’s closest friends has gotten deep into the world of amateur car racing. He’s been working for months to gut and rebuild a late 90s BMW 3 series to compete in a Spec3 league. With the car running, he’s now working to earn his accreditation to race in the league without a trainer. So of course, we attended his first flirting with a real race at Virginia International Racing. We loved watching the two day event!

Tickets to watch were $26 for two.

Travel
Related to the above racing event/”Amusement”—we stayed at a hotel near the race course. Chris used an old $100 certificate for a Hotels.com property that’s several years old to cut the price on a local motel to under $20 out of pocket.
The Super 8 was about $16 after the certificate.

Gifts
For Jenni’s nephew’s birthday, we took he and his brother to a local trampoline/adventure park called Urban Air. It’s a pretty neat setup with a variety of indoor ropes courses, hiplines, trampolines, and ninja warrior-style obstacles. Lots of fun but they didn’t last terribly long and the price starts getting close to a proper amusement park ticket.

This was about $115 of our gift expense this month.

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…

Jenni worked a little more this month than the last. But, we continue to keep things “part-time” at 53 hours total between the two of us.

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

Even with the wild swings in the market lately, our investments continue to be pretty stable. From a high level, our assets and liabilities are shown in the data table below as of October 31, 2025.

• 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 up about 2.3% for the month.

We were up about 1.8%. We’re still falling short of the market, but we’ve been investing a bit lately on something that should payoff in the near future. More to come!

Overall, our net worth increased by around $56K this month.

Previous Donation Winner

A few more people will have access to clean water and functioning toilets thanks to our poll winner, WaterAid. Their efforts are ensuring people can safely drink their water, but also will help keep families safe, children in schools, and communities clean.

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 4 years. We’ve given over $8,600 to deserving charities with your help in deciding which organizations to donate to.

Polls are now open for our next round of candidates: Childhood Charities

Charity Round-Up

They always say it takes a village to raise a child. From day one, a baby relies on its family to care and nurture it into adulthood. Their family becomes everyone who helps that little life with each of the everyday adventures and struggles. While every family can use some additional support, some families need help just to get through the day.

Each of these organizations helps to support children and let them grow to their fullest potential, from birth to leaving the nest. They each have great 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 Candid profile, which details the nonprofit’s operations and transparency.

1)​​ Little Hands Virginia 

Why? Even though they are small, little babies need a lot of diapers to get through each day—and this can get quite expensive very quickly. Diaper distribution and other essential supplies can help families focus on the child versus worrying about these needs. 

Where? Central Virginia, USA

What? Little Hands Virginia is a nonprofit organization focused on the early years of a child’s life. They collect new and gently used items for distribution in the community. All items are inspected and must pass their high standards to be distributed. Requests are managed through local partners for those in need with a newborn child up to age three. They can submit an individual request for essential baby items. This includes diapers, diaper bag supplies, safe sleeping areas, highchairs, carseats, strollers and much more. They want each baby to get the support they need to develop into a toddler. Each box delivered contains an age appropriate book to encourage early literacy as well. Similar to a food bank, they manage a Diaper Bank to distribute the endless need of diapers to hospitals, local agencies, shelters and other organizations. Impact reports, from each distribution center, helps them keep up with trends and new issues. This organization is the region’s emergency supplier of carseats in partnership with the Virginia Department of Health for low-income families.

[Guidestar] [About]

2) Casa Valentina, Inc.

Why? When a child becomes an adult and doesn’t have a parent to rely on, they can become lost and struggle to make it. This program helps foster children prepare for adulthood and give them the support a typical parent might provide and then some.

Where? Florida, USA

What? Casa Valentina is a nonprofit organization focused on foster children. They understand the foster program needs additional support for youth to transition into adulthood and starting out on their own. Their Aftercare Program gives at least one year of continued support to help transition into adulthood through housing referrals, job placement, educational advice and crisis intervention. Their more in depth skills programs for children aged 13-17, about to leave foster care and also for those who are aged 18 or older, provides an aged appropriate curriculum to develop life skills. These can range from emotional regulation, decision making and consequences, communication, cooking, and hygiene. The older group helps youth with financial literacy, career readiness, and general health and wellness. 

[Guidestar] [About]

3) Children’s Defense Fund

Why? Kids are sponges constantly soaking up information and learning. Giving them the opportunity to learn and become more well rounded little humans while out of school, can improve their potential for success and ensure they don’t fall behind.

Where? The United States

Our Notes: Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) is a nonprofit organization focused on children’s education. Their CDF Freedom Schools provide access to high quality literacy education programs during the summer, afterschool and other school breaks. Getting its start in Mississippi in 1964, the first Freedom Schools focused on keeping black children safe while providing them educational experiences they couldn’t get from the local public schools at that time. Now, they have Freedom Schools set up in 28 states across The United States improving children’s education. They ensure all children have access to books and leaders to help guide them, reducing the summer learning loss. Children in these programs not only develop reading comprehension and literacy skills, they improve in social and emotional learning skills as well. CDF advocates for policy changes in the areas of early learning and development, children’s health and healing, family stability and more. Children also can be connected to appropriate medical or social service needs when needed. 

[Guidestar] [About]

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.

What’s Next

With October in the books, November promises one final blast of fall and—no doubt—a big blast of cold. We think the pull of the beach will be in full swing by the month’s end after Thanksgiving. Perhaps we’ll be on a beach with winter at the door. Before that, we’ve had a big project brewing for quite some time that we’re very excited to share next month. Keep an eye out.

Big plans as winter approaches?
Any hot ski tips? We’re thinking about a trip!
Let us know in the comments or on Threads and X (Twitter)!