Ceejay74's Personal Finance Blog

We continue to live in chaos in Minneapolis. Despite Bovino leaving and various officials talking about de-escalation, things are possibly even worse. They move from neighborhood to neighborhood like locusts targeting every person of color they can find. They often sweep up observers regardless of race as well, slapping them with trumped-up or sometimes just holding them for a day or two in horrible conditions before releasing. They pepper spray and tear gas at will.

My non-white kid V had already opted for online school out of fear. Now he's starting to withdraw from extracurricular activities as well. He's a social kid so this is taking a toll.

My non-white wife AS is very hesitant to leave the house alone. She usually will go if one of us white folks can accompany her.

It's like the opposite of the military being sent to the South to desegregate. It's the feds coming in to force separate and unequal conditions on a population that does not want segregation. And in a biracial family that is painful. I implore you to call your congress and tell them not to give ICE/DHS/CBP any more money until they stop this siege.

Anyway, we continue to soldier on with life and work as well as we can. I've had a quiet month for our business but I'm glad of that, even if it means we scramble financially later. It's hard to concentrate or give a shit about the corporate stuff I write about for a living.

At least our net worth is still looking good with a healthy surplus for CoastFIRE for now.

If you want to know how my week went, you just need to know I live in south Minneapolis. I was actually being an observer when I got an alert on my phone that another observer had been shot about 10 minutes drive from where I was parked keeping an eye on a suspicious vehicle idling. I rushed to that scene probably minutes after Renee Good was taken away. Ever since then everything has ramped up. Schools were closed the rest of the week after Border Patrol invaded a high school not far from my daughter's. ICE swarmed my particular little neighborhood all day today abducting people. Etc. etc. etc. Been trying to do my part and just feeling overwhelmed so I haven't gotten much done this week.

Plus we still haven't got clarity on some of the healthcare costs we were hoping to understand before we settled on annual budget targets. But I decided to make some assumptions and finalize the budget to the best of my ability.

It's an ambitious budget. We had to up our grocery, mortgage, health insurance, medical expense and summer camp categories. We chose to up our travel, spending money, kids and family fun categories. We're facing lower fixed revenue due to health premiums and mortgages eating into our income. So it's on me and AS to bring in a lot more dough. We did get an offer to both go 30 hours a week at a place for about 3-4 months in the spring which would give us a very good push toward our ambitious goal of $164K gross income in our business. (Last year we made about $110K.) We do expect some bits of income in the form of NT's side hustle, CC rewards, and maybe a few things like that, so potentially AS and I wouldn't have to make that whole amount ourselves. If the ACA pandemic credits get reinstated that would also take down that needed amount by a grand or two. We're going to go for it for a couple months and then reassess if we need to scale back some of our "wants" based on whether we seem to be in sight of that big income target or not.

I was gonna post some more detailed numbers but I'm so tired from the week, I think I'll leave it at that. Hope everyone else is having a calmer 2026 than we are so far!

I finally was able to close the books on 2025--I was waiting days for NT to categorize two little transactions so I could be done!

Because of the way I work my budget it'll be a bit hard to get granular on numbers, but I'll do my best.

2025 - 2024 comparisons

In 2024 our projected budget was $71,606 in fixed income and $116,405 expected spending, which meant we need to come up with about $45K extra. Since AS and I keep 75% of our earnings, that meant we needed to make $60K. Overall, we brought in that plus some from our business and other sources (tax refunds, credit card rewards, NT's side hustle, but we overspent by $14K and had to take out about $10K on the HELOC to help cover it.

In 2025, our projected budget was $72K fixed income and $155,454 expected spending. We'd raised line items to match what we spent in 2024, and to have more money for travel and a couple other things. That meant we needed to come up with about $85K net or $116K gross. 

AS and I came close, bringing in about $110K on our business, so much better than 2024. We also got $7K in other types of income such as an oil lease from some WV land. However, despite upping many of our budget line items, we overspent by quite a bit and had to borrow $17K out of our HELOC. So between 2024 and 2025, we now owe $26,700 on the HELOC.

Where did the overspending come from? A couple things would take a bit more effort to quantify, such as mortgage payments going up, just because of the way my spreadsheets and tracking work. But I can show the variable categories since I track those over the course of the year and have a final result on them, and that's where the bulk of the overspending happened.

Groceries: $16,100 budgeted; overspent by $1251
Healthcare expenses (not counting premiums): $5400 budgeted, overspent by $172
Barber & hair salon: $1440 budgeted, had $373 left over
Transportation: $2400 budgeted, had $284 left over
Subscriptions: $1200 budgeted,  had $48 left over
Misc. houshold/unbudgeted costs: $4200 budgeted, overspent by $1197
Rental property expenses (not counting mortgage & utilities): $4200 budgeted, overspent by $338
Home improvement: $3,000 budgeted, had $26 left over
Vacays/travel (this was the biggie): $12,000 budgeted, overspent by $14,254
Giving: $900 budgeted, overspent by $424
Dates: $1200 budgeted, had $672 left over
Kid expenses (not counting summer camp): $3,000 budgeted, overspent by $1,290
Interest/fees: $600 budgeted, overspent by $691
Pets: $3,000 budgeted, overspent by $3,513
Family fun: $1,800 budgeted, overspent by $2,748
Camp: $6,000 budgeted, overspent by $53

The biggest thing was that we had a lot of travel that ate up our budget, but we really wanted a grownups trip to Europe which hadn't happened since 2018, so we basically put that trip on credit cards (and eventually the HELOC). The second biggest was caring for our sick cat. The third biggest overspend was family fun, various things but partly my bday party which ended up costing more than expected. And the next biggest was groceries, no surprise given inflation.

That's probably enough for one post, so I'll talk about my 2026 budget projections in a  different post!

Happy New Year, friends! As I wrap up 2025, I'm officially adding our HELOC debt to the spreadsheet. For the past two years I've been hoping it was a short-term loan that I could quickly pay back, but with where inflation is going, healthcare costs spiking, and me and AS still trying to build our business, I've had to acknowledge that this debt is gonna hang around a while longer. We borrowed about $10K in 2024 and $16K this year, so $26K total.

As a result of realizing all this accumulated debt, our net worth went down this month--but only by about $11K, because we paid down a bit of mortgage principal and added $13K to retirement values. So our end of year numbers are pretty nice: nearly $2.3M in assets, $1.1M of that in retirement accounts, the rest in real estate. $1.5M net worth. We started the year with $940K in retirement and $1.4M net worth, so at least our net worth increased a good amount despite the debt! We need $918K to be at Coast FIRE, so that means we have a $200K surplus in our retirement accounts. (And as a reminder, I don't factor Social Security benefits into our retirement assets at all.)

I'll try to write a wrapup of our 2025 finances and the year in general, but I'll probably wait til tomorrow when I officially close out the books on December. 

Well, I didn't do very well in the photo sharing challenge, but it was fun doing the few posts that I managed! It's been a crazy year; gonna try to remedy that in the new year, but who knows?

I'm very sad to report that one of our two cats, Whiskers (aka Whiskey), passed away last Tuesday. He had cancer that was diagnosed nearly a year before, plus a host of other medical conditions, so we're grateful to have gotten that amount of time with him. He was slowing down and we knew his health was failing, but we kept him around as long as he still seemed to be enjoying life. Even 24 hours before he went into distress, he climbed into my lap and snuggled comfortably, and gulped down his favorite treats after taking his pills that afternoon. But Tuesday morning he vomited, lost all strength, and was meowing at us in a different way than he ever had, so we took him to the ER. He had a number of things going on that we could've tried to address, but he'd clearly reached the point where he wouldn't be enjoying life anymore, so we made the decision to put him to sleep.

The only other living thing I've watched die was my mom almost exactly 3 years before. There were a lot of similiarites, and also this was much better than my mom's hard few days before she passed, so it brought up some other emotions that probably mixed in with the grief. 

The house is very quiet, tidier, and a bit empty feeling. We're all still getting over it. He was a big character and super affectionate and naughty, and he required a fair bit of care during his final year, so our lives are pretty different now.

Wow, it's just wild to me that it's already the end of the year. I started working on my 2026 Annual Budget this weekend! I have to wait to see how a bunch of things shake out before I finalize it, but I did what I could at this point.

We had very small increases to our retirement and paid off about $1800 of debt principal, so we had a $6K increase to our net worth. Since it appears impossible that we'll pay off our HELOC by the end of the year, which was my deadline before I add it to our "official" debt on our net worth spreadsheet, I fully expect our net worth to decrease at the end of the year even if the markets go up.

But luckily we're over $190K ahead of where we need to be for CoastFIRE, so I'm not worried about it. Probably the worst case scenario is we'll still have $25K of debt in our HELOC, which is a bummer but won't make a huge dent in our Coast surplus. And I'm hoping when I tally things at the end of the year that I can pay it down a little so it'll be less debt than that.

EDIT: I forgot we received an annual update on one of NT's UK pensions, which increased by about US$6,000, so at least that means this month's net worth increase was double what I thought--just over $12K!

I have to play catchup on photos again! Hopefully I'll find time tomorrow. Meanwhile here's our net worth update.

It was another pretty good month thanks mainly to retirement gains. I still expect the bubble to burst at some point, but we have a nearly $190K surplus on our CoastFIRE balance, so I'm not too worried. Also there's always a rebound after a downturn, and we've got at least another decade before we fully retire.

Next month our debt will go under $700K, which would be a cool milestone except it's looking much more certain that we will not even come close to paying off our HELOC this year, so whatever that balance is on 12/31 I'll be adding that to our "official" debt balance.

Once again I got super busy, this time going to DC (by way of Baltimore airport) and Northern Virginia (hence "DMV" which is a common abbreviation for the area--thank goodness I didn't spend 5 days in the Dept of Motor Vehicles!!). It was just the parents--the kids stayed home again (with their godfather in the lower part of the duplex, so not really "home alone").

We flew in Thursday and I didn't take many pics, but I did take one of a mezcal menu to text my friend who's a fan of the liquor to ask his advice on which flight to order, heheh. (He didn't answer so I picked at random.)

On Friday, we went to a fancy little awards gala for Black authors, where the main awards were called "the Zoras" (after Zora Neale Hurston). Afterward in the bar we ended up at a table with two of the winners, so I snapped a pic of their trophies!

On Saturday we had another fancy event in the evening associated with this same group, but first, during the day, NT and I attended the DC No Kings rally! It was massive, and very peaceful, and we got to hear Bernie Sanders speak (though we couldn't see him from where we were).

On Sunday, I went to Northern Va. where my dad lives. All three of my sisters plus some nieces and nephews came by for a few hours too. I didn't take many pics that don't have my relatives' faces in them, but I did snap one of my kid V's wallet, which they thought was gone forever but had actually been left at my sister's on their last visit a few months before. More than the wallet, they'd been super sad about the leather "chip" in it from their first YMCA camp, so I texted a pic right away!

I stayed at my dad's Sunday night and in the afternoon we had one more game of Scrabble before I headed to the airport. It was a close one til I got a big triple-word score near the end. With this win, I beat him 2 out of 3. (His final score is hard to read but it's 276.) But I had to work hard for those wins--he's 94 years old but his brain is sharp as a tack!

I didn't take any pics today but doing this post reminded me to, so here's a shot of my other kitty Clue! She's the same age as the sick old cat, but she's more independent and busy so she's not hanging around me trying to get a cuddle all the time. 

Hahaha, I drastically underestimated how hectic my October is; I've got so much going on and trying to get my paid work done in between other things has made for crazy days that are over before I know it. Well, I've got a couple hours of downtime right now, so I looked through my phone to see if I happened to take any pics this last week. Not many, but here are a few:

Saturday 10/11

I spent Friday-Sunday in a DIY in-town "writer's retreat" with a friend; we visited libraries, coffeeshops and other locations around Minneapolis and wrote intensively at each one. I got over 10K words written but didn't take many photos! However, after our full day of writing Saturday I caught a good music show in a charming dive bar, and I liked this pic from it:

Tuesday 10/14

Our sick cat loves to sit on my lap when I'm trying to get work done because I work on the couch. Usually he cuddles down where the computer would go so AS got me this table that fits over him so I can keep working while he sleeps. But that day, he decided to sit in such a way that the table was rendered useless because it wouldn't fit over him. So I took a pic to send AS:

Thursday 10/16

I was in a bad mood and having trouble focusing so I took a walk around the neighborhood. The fresh air and exercise cleared my head and this Halloween display cheered me up by making me laugh:

I remembered to take a photo while I was prepping dinner. Not very aesthetic or exciting but here tis! This is a recipe called Pasta Della California from the cookbook Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowicz. I don't know when we started topping it with chopped up vegan chikn nuggets, but that was part of it (not pictured).

It contains lime juice and zest, garlic, chili flakes, salt, veggie broth, white wine, broccoli, arugula and avocado. Usually I do it with linguine but had to settle for spaghetti tonight.

I've been wanting to get more active on the blogs again for, like, years, but the things I need and love to do have just expanded and filled every nook and cranny of my life, it seems. So blogging at the level I used to just seemed daunting. This photo game feels like a low-stakes (in terms of time and mental effort) way to hang out with y'all more, so I'm going to try. If I happen to take a photo and if I happen to remember to post it, I shall.

This was the only pic I took today. Our kitchen's heated floor just got turned on after our unseasonably warm fall finally cooled off, and so immediately the critters started gravitating to it. This is my oldest kid (AA, 15) and one of our two old cats, Whiskers (Whiskey). He's the one with cancer; he's also got a benign tumor on his back (unrelated to the terminal cancer) that he'll scratch until it's gouged and bleeding, so we put him in baby shirts now. He can even do a lot of damage through T-shirt material, so AS sews denim patches over the tumor spot. Now he can scratch to his heart's content and not bloody up his back! 

We're back from Europe! We had a fantastic time in Portugal (new to us) and Spain (2nd time there). I was exhausted from an intense summer of work so I did more relaxing than sightseeing, but I didn't mind--relaxing away from all my stuff and responsibilities was way more impactful than if I'd tried to have a staycation or anything. Anyway, we all loved Portugal and it's definitely at the top of possible places we'd love to have a winter home, if we can figure out how to afford that. We've been having fun discussing different scenarios, trying not to get too stuck in one way of thinking but really explore all angles, even the out-there ones.

The retirement accounts did well this past month; our net worth went up $28K, largely due to stock market gains. The CoastFIRE calculator says I could keep coasting and retire at 61, so only 10 years away!

The travel spending this year way outstripped what we budgeted for, so we're currently running at a deficit for the year. I know there's more spending and also more income to go this year, so I'm not trying to predict how much we'll be in the hole, but I do think we'll be a certain amount so. I don't have the HELOC reflected in net worth because I was hoping to go in the opposite direction this year, especially when it seemed like NT was going to get a lucrative new job. That job is a much more remote possibility now, so at the end of the year, whatever we've accumulated in HELOC debt will make it onto the net worth spreadsheet. Right now it's at $24K; about half from 2024 and half from this year. But it could be less by the end of the year, so I'll wait and see. 

While it's not great to be overspending by $1K a month, part of it is definitely me and AS still getting our business growing. I'm on track to make at least $15K more this year (gross) than last (of course our spending/expenses increased a similar amount this year so it's not solving all our problems lol) and I think there's room to grow, so we're on a good trajectory!

I can finally access blogs and write entries, hooray! There was about a week when I couldn't, so I couldn't make my usual monthly net worth post.

It was pretty good news for August: about a $25K bump in net worth, mostly due to retirement fund values increasing. We're comfortably at CoastFIRE with a $140K surplus. I tried the calculator with different ages than my 65 goal, and it says I could theoretically retire at 62 and still be at CoastFIRE status. To retire at 61 (10 years from now) we would have to continue our current contributions ($250 per month) for 6 more years. To retire at 60 we would have to up our retirement contributions to $650 per month for the next 9 years (basically no CoastFIRE, just save til retirement).

Who knows what the future will bring, but it's kind of fun playing around with the numbers! We are currently on a European vacation that is definitely over our travel budget for this year, and we're facing spending overages in nearly every category this year, so it's good to feel like our retirement nest egg is healthy at least. I hope it doesn't crash too terribly in the coming months/years.

We had a very modest increase (about $10K) in net worth; $2K was mortgage reduction and the rest our retirement funds. We're still solidly in CoastFIRE status with a $100K+ surplus, which is good because our spending is outpacing our earnings so far this year. (Some of the extra spending is discretionary; we're taking a trip to Europe and a few others as well, and some of the home improvements we've made weren't strictly necessity. Other things like healthcare, escrow increase, taxes owed and supportive care for our cat with cancer were unavoidable unforeseen costs.) I'm leaning on our HELOC to keep our checking account in the green. I'm hoping to pay some or all of it down before the end of the year, so I haven't added it to the debt side of our net worth calculations, but if it's still lingering by the new year, I will.

Since we all have self-employment and side hustles in addition to the more predictable income of NT's job and the property rentals, that could still change, fingers crossed. But I'm glad we have this cushion in our CoastFIRE plan right now; it makes me less stressed about this year's deficit.

It definitely feels premature to be celebrating with so much current and potential chaos in our country, but we had a second good month in the markets, almost as much as last month, and hit an exciting milestone: over a million in our nest egg!

We're Coasting along with a $106K surplus to our CoastFIRE number. I tinkered with the calculator and it says we're at Coast even if I retired at 63 instead of 65. Aiming for 62, we'd be supposedly able to reach Coast in 3 years with just the tiny amount NT is putting in his 401(k).

This is all good to see, because we just booked a European vacation for this fall that we can only partly pay for, so we're going to be carrying a bit of it as debt for a while. So that felt like a reckless decision (though I did contemplate it for months, it wasn't exactly impulsive) and I'm glad to see proof of my more sensible side as well.

(A note about the "loan from friends" item, which I explained in comments a while back but is worth mentioning for anyone who's confused... we had a very informal agreement with our friends (who rent the bottom half of the duplex) that we would let them gradually obtain part ownership of the duplex. They helped out in the early days of ownership with a bit of money for the down payment and for some urgent repairs, and we were going to put that toward their portion of the house. For various reasons, that plan sort of stalled over the years, so I consider that money they gave us to be a loan. I'm not sure they even do, or if we're still planning on revisiting that co-ownership idea, so I just kind of let it hang out there as a "loan" in case it ever comes up. I would pay them back if we definitively decided we weren't doing the ownership thing.

One reason I'm in no hurry to settle this one way or the other is we do each other lots of favors. Their rent is basically 2/5ths of the mortgage payment and 2/7ths of the utilities, so it's WAY under the going rate for a 2-bedroom in our neighborhood. But then again, they pretty much gave us their old car (it's in their name but we have primary use of it). We've been friends for decades so there's a lot of gray area in our arrangement. Like I said, they might not even consider that money to be a loan so much as a gift, but to me it could go either way so I keep it classified as a loan.

Finally a decent month for retirement growth. We're at Coast FIRE with a surplus of $72K; the calculator says I could plan to retire at 64 instead of 65 and still be Coast!

It really really burns me that while I'm riding the waves of market volatility, all sorts of speculators with inside info are getting even richer by figuring out when some stupid Trump move is gonna make the market crash and rise again. But whatever. Just gonna keep on keeping on.

Our net worth went up about $13K. We regained a little over half what we lost last month in net worth, aided by some modest gains in NT's UK pension that we hadn't recorded for a couple years, plus our minimum paydown on mortgages, plus a small 401k contribution, plus a partial recovery on our retirement fund values.

We're still below where we were in November 2024, and well below our January 2025 high, so it's not exactly exciting, but at least it's not ruinous. We remain in Coast FIRE territory with a $34K surplus.

We lost about $24K of retirement savings, or about 2.5% of the total value of those funds. Offset by a small contribution to NT's 401k and our regular mortgage payments, our net worth decreased by $22K.

I turned 51 this month, so our CoastFIRE number increased $35K. We are still at CoastFIRE with a $22,500 surplus of where we need to be at. A far cry from the $86K surplus I had in January, but what can you do? It's all worth it to have hundreds of thousands of government employees laid off, international students snatched off our local campuses by ICE, measles spreading like wildfire, our local foodbank losing 15% of its funding, planes falling out of the sky, Palestine and Ukraine being destroyed faster than ever, state supreme court races being bought by a billionaire, and the two-term limit about to be ignored. I mean there are too many blessings to list all in one place. Oh and a tech-bro kid named Big Balls has my social security number, yay!

Well, despite Musk and Trump's best efforts to capsize the economy, we only lost $2700 of net worth. It would've been closer to $4K but our regular mortage principal payments and NT's small contribution to his 401(k) offset it a bit.

Tomorrow I turn 51, so my next CoastFIRE calculation will be at that age, but for now, we're on track with Coasting with an $82K surplus of where we need to be.

No other financial news, really. NT still waiting to see if his high-paying dream job comes to fruition, but it hasn't been ruled out, just supposedly taking longer to get things in place than expected. So he's very optimistic and I'm still cautiously willing to entertain the scenario but not counting on anything.

Our retirement regained about what it lost last month, so a good month. We're still at CoastFIRE with an $86K surplus. Since I have our calculations assuming me retiring at 65, so for fun I played with how many years I could shave off that. According to the calculator I could retire at 63 and still be at Coast right now!

Another crazy year; feel like I'm still catching my breath from it. Financially, there were ups and downs. Personally and in the family, same thing. Let's see if I can recap everything...

Snapshot of the past three year-end reviews:

In a nutshell, our assets have grown steadily but our debt increased the year we bought the rental property (asset gain didn't match debt taken due in part to tanking retirement and a big unforeseen tax hit), so it's taken three years for our net worth to surpass the previous high at the end of 2021.

Still, even if it took awhile, a new high in net worth is something to celebrate! Other bright spots this year:

- WE HIT COAST FIRE! That was the biggie!!! I wasn't sure we'd get there since we stopped Roths and most other retirement contributions for a couple years, but we hit it in June and have stayed above our CoastFIRE number ever since.

- Despite not contributing much at all to retirement, our nest egg grew $115,487 to a new high of $941,738!

- Our assets hit multimillion status ($2M+ ) in March, dipped briefly back below that in April, and then came back up in May and stayed above $2 million!

- We experienced a couple windfalls, most notably a $16K tax refund and a $40K inheritance. We used it to pay off our HELOC and help fund our budget as AS and I grew our business. (We did have to dip back into the HELOC these past few months to the tune of $11K due to some hiccups, but it's not reflected in our debt total because I feel like I have a solid plan for paying it off.)

- We also received partial ownership of several pieces of real estate as my dad wanted to shift some of it over to us so it doesn't ever have to be dealt with in probate. My sisters and I have received several offers from energy companies for various leasing and buying of mineral rights etc. but as of now none of them have turned into anything. I don't know if I'll see much financial difference from co-owning these properties but it's kind of nice despite the hassle of getting our large family to make decisions and such.

We had some hiccups and scares in 2024 too:

- This was the first full year of AS and I both being self-employed, so we did fall a bit short of fully funding the year and had to take some of the HELOC out again ($11,000). This was due to unexpectedly high spending in several categories, most notably $3,000 in pet-health expenses and $5,000 more in healthcare out-of-pocket than budgeted. We also had some repairs needed for the rental property ($4,000). Given those three curveballs and the fact that our business wasn't at its full potential the first part of the year, I feel like we did pretty well.

- NT got into a car-pedestrian accident in late 2023 which we got sued for, and most of 2024 was spent worrying about how it would all pan out, but a couple months ago we got confirmation that everything was covered by our auto and liability insurance. So far, our premiums have barely moved. I don't know if that's because the case is still in process or if they really won't go up, but for now, it didn't end up being a financial nightmare. (A nightmare for the poor lady who was badly injured, had lots of medical bills, and lost income from not being able to work, so I'm glad it sounds like the insurance companies aren't contesting NT being at fault and will likely pay some or all of what she's suing for.)

- As noted above, we had some big vet bills. One of our beloved cats ended up being diagnosed with likely cancer (we're awaiting one more round of blood tests but the vet is pretty certain). From what we understand, chemo (and all the related tests and scans and visits etc) would come to about $20K, and the average survival is 50% live more than one year, 10% make it to three years. Given that our boy has FIV, a heart murmur and anemia and is on the older side, we don't rate his chances very well. And the additional vet visits would severely impact his quality of life for however long he lived (cars and carriers and strangers stress him out). So we're leaning toward palliative care to make him comfortable and let him enjoy the rest of his life. It's still gonna cost us a couple grand probably this year, but whatever we can do to give him the best care possible we'll do. Chemo just doesn't seem like a good route for him.

- Some of the healthcare costs were just stupid. I didn't check that the major hospital I went to for my mammogram was in network on my newish insurance, but it wasn't, so they barely covered anything. I get a diagnostic and cysts removed every year, so it was something like $2500. My monthly premium went up this year too, insult to injury, from $505 to $584. I'm going to try to get on NT's plan soon, and if that doesn't work I'll at least check network coverage VERY carefully before I do anything, since this plan is really crappy. (I shopped other plans on the exchange but I'd have to pay a TON more for anything even remotely good so I'll stick with crappy since I have a chance of not needing it much longer.)

Overall, it was a positive year financially and on paper life is great, but it's not all rosy. There have been ups and downs.

- I'm struggling a lot with having turned 50 in March, which I didn't think was going to bother me at all. It's not the getting old I mind, it's the prospect of mortality. I'm trying to get better about it but it's cast a shadow on most of the year. In lots of other ways I'm doing well though--I'm loving working for myself, I've got lots of awesome hobbies including learning a new language and taking singing lessons, and this music website I run has made me a minor celebrity (in a very niche part of the local music scene anyway, LOL).

- AS had a really tough year mentally, still dealing with some various fallouts from the pandemic and her decision to leave her lifelong career path, along with a definitive split from a family member that was very necessary but not an easy decision to make. She's feeling a bit adrift and not too happy. But I'm somewhat hopeful she'll find her way and I'll do everything I can to help.

- One of our kids, VL (formerly SL) had a rollercoaster year in terms of health (physical and mental) that included some tough times at school. The situation is still in flux but we're trying to help them with both sides of their struggles. (They're still excelling academically despite everything and have joined a few activities that bring them a lot of joy, so it's not all bad.)

- Our other kid AA is a newly minted high-schooler, and she probably had the calmest year of all of us. She's had a little trouble making friends but she seems to be making progress on that front. And doing well academically, and getting to be more independent little by little, so overall a good year for her I think.

- NT had a pretty great year! Other than the stress of the accident lawsuit and some colds and viruses (including COVID once), things have been going well. He likes his part-time job and they love him, but he's got an exciting prospect that he's totally confident is happening and I'll be confident in as soon as I see a job offer in writing. But if it pans out, it could net us over $30K more this year (conservatively) if he starts March 1st as he thinks he will. I worked up two versions of our annual budget, and if that job comes through it'll change the picture considerably! The best part is, it's a job that aligns with his passions and hobbies.

I think those are the big points; I may come in and edit if there's something major I'm missing. I'm grateful things turned out as well as they did this year despite the hurdles and curveballs. I don't take anything for granted anymore, but I'm trying to be open to the possibility that 2025 could be a good year for our family.

It has been a rollercoaster few months! Lost net worth in October, gained it back and then some in November, then lost some again in December. The net gain to our net worth over the past 3 months? $2,000.

Well, it's better than losing ground. We are still about $60K ahead of where we need to be to stay on CoastFIRE, so it's all good.

Next I'll work on my 2024 wrap-up post!

Last month we lost about $16K in net worth and this month we gained about $38K, so it's like we gained an average of $19K per month over the past two. About $7K was getting an annual update on one of NT's UK retirement accounts, which I don't have online access to so only get updates when they come in the mail. Another $2K was paying down our mortgages.

This month I'm going to start putting together my annual budget for next year. It's going to be hard to predict because NT might start a new job around March that'll be nearly double what he currently makes, but we don't have a firm offer with start date, salary, benefits and terms of contract, so I'll probably work up the whole year with his current income and then we can do a big shift midyear if the job really does come through.

One thing I really need to do is look at where we had unplanned spending and budget overages, and work that into the regular budget so we have less of that type of surprise next year. I know for sure healthcare will need to be upped quite a bit, and we really need regular categories for home improvement, dates, kid activities/expenses etc. I had a blanket $300 per month for unplanned expenses but we blew through that; we need to bake a lot more into the standard budget so AS and I know how much we should be trying to pull in with our business.

Anyway, I'll have a detailed run-down of all of that at the end of the year!

Not a great month for the markets, so our net worth fell by more than $16K (and our retirement account value by more than that; the total drop was offset by paying off a couple grand on our mortgages). But, the good news is we're still about $35K above our CoastFIRE number, so we're still on track!

Not much else to report financially since last month. I'm gearing up to do a big year-end review of our spending; I kept more detailed records of where we overspent (and a scant few places we underspent ha) so I can make a more realistic budget for 2025. This'll be a good learning-curve year for us, as AS and I will have completed our first full year of owning a business together. Overall it's been pretty good but hopefully we can do better next year now that we have more experience and more clients in our roster.

The big news this month is we heard from our auto insurance providers. Between the basic car coverage we share with our neighbors and the liability/umbrella stuff we have on our own, they are accepting our claim. (As a recap, NT struck a pedestrian and she incurred considerable medical bills and sued us.) It's still in process but it sounds like we don't have to worry about a giant damages bill. (I'm guessing premiums will go up, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Whatever it is can't be as bad as my fevered imaginings of our life savings being drained!)

That's so big that it's helping me deal with this morning's frustration, that a big hospital is apparently out of network for my insurance, so my annual mammogram came to $1500 (assuming there aren't additional bills from the labs/doctors/whatever, which sometimes happens). Our medical expenses have been well over what I budgeted for this year. It's not the only category to go over budget, though it is the biggest by far. I'm keeping close track of all unbudgeted spending and plan to do a big analysis at the end of the year to come up with more realistic budget numbers and figure out what we need to be making to cover us.

Neil is still in talks with the potential new employer, so if that works out I'm hoping they offer a good benefits package and I can get on his insurance (his current part-time job covers him and the kids well but it would cost a lot to put me on it, so I pay for private individual coverage). If not, I'll find another private provider and make sure the biggest hospital in our area is in network. (Honestly never thought to check because they are so ubiquitous.)

The other big thing that's been happening is my dad is going to build a new vacation home on the property that he deeded over to his daughters. It's not my money (unless you're talking eventual inheritance) but it's my land (shared with 7 other people officially, many more unofficially), so I've been helping with planning and estimates and stuff. Looks like it'll be about $200K plus water and some other things. It's a good chunk of his cash savings, but he also has his 401(k). I don't visit the property very often (it's in rural WV and I'm in MN), but I'm glad he's doing this because the property has immense family significance (my mom is even buried there) and the old house is falling apart.

We also found out my mom had 10% mineral rights on some land that's no longer in the family, and an oil/gas company did a lease offer, but I think it'll be about $16K divided among 4 sisters, so not much after taxes. We may end up using most of it to furnish the new vacation home anyway.

Those are all the big money updates, I think. Our net worth went up nearly $19K in September. CoastFIRE is still coasting; the number we need is $882,871 and we are at $945,679, so that's nice and comforting.

I haven't been paying attention to the markets at all this month, but we had a pretty great gain in our retirement accounts! Combined with about $2K of mortgage paydown, our net worth increased by just over $30K! I checked the CoastFIRE calculator and we're still coastin' along.

No word on the car accident lawsuit yet. Both our insurance carriers are on the case now. Hopefully between them they can sort it out and get a settlement that doesn't ruin us. This situation has convinced me though that we need to decouple our car stuff from our neighbors once this all shakes out. It's too weird and complicated. And also, we'll have teen drivers all too soon; I bet they won't want the headache of sharing a policy then!

I don't know if our neighbors will agree to sell us the car we mostly use or if we'll have to look at buying one of our own. I imagine the lawsuit will drag into next year anyway so we've got time before we need to figure that out.

On the plus side of all this, we've gone ahead with putting our rental property in an LLC and adding that entity to our insurance policy, and NT is in the process of getting liability insurance for his business. We'll be paying more attention to insurance of all kinds from now on!

On the work front, AS and I are doing well with our business. It seems to be organically building with not much work on our part. I'd like it to get a bit more profitable than it is but overall I'm happy with where we are. This is our first full year in business together and we've grossed (received and expected) $82K. For two people that's not a ton, but considering this is our first year I think it's pretty good. We don't work anywhere near full time so we have room to grow.

NT's still doing well with his part-time office job, his clothing side hustle and managing our rental property. Just recently, he got what could be a game-changing job prospect: a full time job, low six figures, involved in something he's extremely passionate about. It's too early in the talking stage with this new venture to get too excited about it or believe that it's real, but if it was, it'd be at least twice the salary he makes at his PT job! But we'll see. I'm not sure if/when he'll get a firm offer/contract or when the job would start.

It certainly comes at an interesting time for us, because AS has expressed interest in being able to get away from the Minnesota winters (and MN in general) for longer periods of time, and that resurfaced the idea of buying a place somewhere, which we've talked about off and on over the years as a sort of someday dream. We've been thinking about Europe first, since we already have ties there. But rather than England we'd love to have it somewhere like Italy or Portugal. At present a second/vacation home is well out of reach, but if NT really got this job, that might change things considerably.

But, every time I get too excited about our future prospects, the reality of that lawsuit hanging over our heads brings me back to earth. So I'm just taking things one day at a time and managing the things I can manage.

We had a modest month of retirement fund growth and are still on track with CoastFIRE! I also had a mini-revelation a few weeks ago that we may be a lot more set than I realized. I haven't factored Social Security benefits at all into my calculations; I'm a bit of a pessimist when it comes to thinking about whether it'll still be a thing when I'm of age. But I checked our benefits out of curiosity and saw that the combined benefit of our three accounts could be $4,200 if we start drawing down at age 62 and $7,200 if we start at age 70. Our estimated required monthly funds in retirement are $5,500. I had been a bit worried that I was estimating our needs too low, but now I'm much less worried because chances are we'll receive at least partial Social Security, so I think we should be good!

Minutes after mentioning it in my net worth update, I got some more info on the car accident lawsuit.

Our neighbor came up to talk because he was worried--his car insurance that we're on is very basic, I think only has $100K liability, and it sounds like the victim's expenses are already more than that. Our umbrella policy has a $300K deductible, so he was worried we'd be on the hook for that big gap in there, I think. But NT printed out our policies and it turns out we have our own automotive policy as well with a $300K coverage for each incident.

So, hopefully if we're reading everything right, that insurance should cover whatever our neighbor's policy doesn't, and our umbrella should cover anything above and beyond what those two policies cover.

If this works out with only higher premiums, damn will I feel lucky, because we would have survived this only because we stumbled into a great broker who set us up with good coverage. I didn't even specifically remember getting that driver policy! And if we come out of this with our shirts on our back, we're going to be looking at all our insurance options, including making sure our rental properties and NT's side hustle get coverage, and making sure we're covered in all directions. This is the kind of experience that puts the fear in you!

Still waiting to see what the fallout is from our car accident lawsuit, but at least the markets had another good month. Part of me was wondering if there would be a big drop and right away pull CoastFIRE out from under us just when we hit it LOL, so I'm glad that didn't happen. Hopefully it never will, but we'll see!

Tonight the spouses and I are going out to a fancy restaurant on a rare date (we're all so busy with separate interests and pursuits these days!) to celebrate our CoastFIRE milestone moment.

I'm looking forward to it, but a new fear has come to replace my worries about retirement. A few months ago, NT had an accident where he was driving and hit a pedestrian. At a slow speed thankfully, but she was older and hurt, so he felt awful and it was really stressful. NT stayed with her until the ambulance took her away, and we don't know anything more about her condition.

Various documentation things have been winding their way through the process with our car insurance provider, but again we weren't sure what it would end up meaning. A couple days ago, we were served with papers for a lawsuit filed by the woman he hit.

So. I don't really know what it's all going to mean in the end. I assume it will cost us money but my imagination ranges everywhere from just a higher insurance premium to a big settlement where we lose a bunch of our assets or spend the rest of our lives putting a big chunk of our paycheck toward it. Maybe it'll be somewhere in between?

The good news is that our downstairs neighbor, with whom we share the car and insurance policy, is a lawyer. With a lot of lawyer friends. So I'm kind of trusting the process and hoping this is something that others who know a lot more than me (our insurance company and our lawyer friend) will help this come to a conclusion that isn't too ruinous to our financial security.

For tonight, I'm going to try and put those fears aside and celebrate the fact that we're a really good team and if we got this far on retirement, we can be resourceful and pull out of whatever situation we find ourselves in.