Finally a more positive net worth outlook than we've had for a while! Our retirement accounts went up in value about $40K, we paid off a bit of our tax bill, and our COAST Fire timeline got 4 years shaved off: It now says we could reach it in 8 years vs. 12!

I'm going in to 2023 with far fewer expectations about how life will go. It's just too unpredictable. However, that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying! On the financial side, since we have 1.5 steady incomes (plus rental property income), there's only so much I can say we'll be able to do with any amount of certainty. So I've set up a snap shot of "good," "better" and "best" scenarios and laid out how much extra income gross would need to be made (mainly on AS and her freelance business but also anything NT and I might pick up outside our regular jobs).

I don't know if this chart will make sense to anyone else, but it really helps me and AS when we're thinking through what we might be able to get done this year! Basically, I think we can save $5K to our EF, $9K to our Roths, and have small amounts for travel, home improvement and giving on my and NT's regular income, and if AS grosses $41,667, we should also be able to pay down $30K of tax/kitchen debt. If she made double that, we could get quite a bit more money for each of those categories. And in the best case scenario, if the three of us could pull in $139,769 gross between us in addition to our regular income, we could achieve everything on my financial wish list. That's a highly unlikely scenario but I wanted to put a price tag on our ideal state, so to speak. We're not shooting for it per se but it would be exceedingly cool if we could get there!

Hi everyone! It's been about four months since my last update. Financially not much has changed; we paid down some debt and lost some more value in our retirement accounts, so we gained $1,900 in net worth over 4 months.

Lifewise, AS is doing a LOT better mentally after quitting her high-stress job and has restarted her freelance business. It takes a bit to build future work so income has been slow to come this year, but she's got tons of work booked for the first part of 2023 so things will be looking up soon. NT got a part-time office job and likes it, so that's some steady income in addition to the rental property he's managing and the bits of money from other side hustles. The kiddos are getting great grades and doing well.

I've had a lot of ups and downs myself. My job and creative pursuits are going well. But my mom went into the hospital in late November and died on Dec. 1. I was able to travel to Virginia a couple days before; she was barely aware of her surroundings but I'm glad I could help my dad and my sisters. It was really really awful and hard. We buried her the next week in West Virginia on our family property and had a beautiful ceremony. I wish she could've been there for that part instead of the days of suffering in the hospital! I feel like I'm doing okay most of the time, but it's only been a month so the grief is still fresh when it hits me at unexpected times.

Anyway, it's been a real mixed bag of a year. Financially, we didn't get much farther on paying down the tax bill or the remainder of what we borrowed for the kitchen, and we haven't built up the EF yet. Coast FIRE is way, way off track since we haven't been able to put much to retirement for the past 6 months or so. But, in good news, I'm restarting our monthly Roth contributions, 50% of the max so $750 per month. If AS's freelance income is good I'll fill in with more contributions, but I also have to think about paying down the tax/kitchen debt, which is currently at about $39K, and rebuilding our EF, ideally to $20K. We also have to fix an electrical issue at the rental property that will be a few thousand. So we shall see.

I'll put our detailed current net worth and Coast FIRE calcluations below, but here's a snapshot of how things changed in 12 months:

December 2021 assets: $1,579,801 ; December 2022 assets: $1,801,176

December 2021 debt: $370,966; December 2022 debt: $791,694

December 2021 net worth: $1,208,835; December 2022 net worth: $1,009,482

CURRENT HOUSEHOLD NET WORTH

COAST FIRE STATUS

I use this Coast FIRE calculator (https://walletburst.com/tools/coast-fire-calc/) and according to it,  our retirement goal is $1.65 million by the time I'm 65 (17 years). It says we're currently 12 years (I'd be age 60) from our Coast FIRE number of $1.356 million. (That's with our 50% Roth contributions and my 401(k), which are the only two savings baked into our budget at this point.)

Here are the Coast FIRE parameters I use:

Ideal budget      Monthly

Housing            $0        (rents covering prop expenses)

Healthcare        $1,500

Groceries         $1,000

Fun      $1,500

Travel  $1,000

Utilities $500   

Giving  $500   

Home improvement       $500   

Gifts     $250   

Transportation  $250   

Monthly $7,000

Minus rental income      -$1,500

Total monthly    $5,500

Annual  $66,000          

I'm in between my spouses' age, so I used my age but our combined retirement investments.

Current age: 48

Retirement age: 65

Annual spending in retirement: $66,000

Monthly contribution: $1,451

Investment growth rate: 7%

Inflation rate: 3%

Withdrawal rate: 4%

Current invested assets: $688,216

Coast FIRE number at current age: $847,066