Well it's been another eventful month! I got laid off at the beginning of the month from the company where I've worked for 17 years. I guess they're shrinking the marketing arm even more because the profits aren't there.

The good news is I got a decent severance agreement. I got 3 more weeks of work (my last day will be this Friday), 12 weeks' severance pay after that, and health insurance through June. (After that it's COBRA or Obamacare for me, NT and the kids, so I know that expense will go up.) I should get a bit of money from accrued unused vacation PTO as well. Seems they'll also hook me up with a job-finding consultancy that can help with resume building etc., so that's nice.

Even though I'll essentially get paid through the summer, I'm starting to look around at employment options now. I've got a call tomorrow with a former boss who may be able to give me some freelance writing work. Even if not, it'll be good to connect with her for networking's sake. A few other people have expressed interest in hiring me for freelance writing; I'll follow up with them once I finish out this final week of work. I figure this summer will be a good time to test the waters of freelancing/self-employment and see if I've got the temperament (and enough connections to make it a going concern).

We've been having trouble finding tenants for our rental property, but it seems we've got renters starting in early June for one side of it, and applicants who seem serious for the other half, maybe able to move in July 1. Fingers crossed on that as it's over $5K of income, over $3K of which goes to cover the mortgage and utilities, so having it empty in May really dragged down the already struggling budget!

AS's potential job thing continues to look very interesting and we should know more in a couple weeks, but she's essentially being asked to create a proposed job description and salary, and they'll see if they can make it happen for her. Meanwhile she continues to pull in freelance work, so while income is slow to come, she's definitely racking up future payments that'll help. And if this create-your-dream-job thing really comes to fruition, that'd be a massive weight off. She might even be able to put the kids on her health insurance! (Not NT because they're not legally married, but she IS legally the parent of both our kids. So then I'd just have to worry about NT on my insurance.)

My dad out of the blue decided to gift each of his kids $10K! This was a massive help to our budget deficit for May and June due to the empty rental property. We don't have the money yet but my sister is working on getting it to us. We've had to take money out of the HELOC but thanks to my dad will be able to pay it back in soon. And it'll cover the cost of a new computer, which I had to get because I've been using my company computer and need to turn that in at the end of my employment.

But for now, our HELOC debt is $7K more, we haven't been able to put away much for retirement, and the markets are slightly down from last month, so our net worth went down by about $8500. I didn't bother to do the Coast FIRE calculations since I know it'll be the same or worse compared with last month.

But, if I were able to make this freelance thing work, I could potentially be working a less than 40-hour week and pulling in the same money as before! My Coast FIRE goal was to work fewer hours but I'd have to wait until I could draw less income. This way, I could almost reach my Coast FIRE goal of less than full time before I've even reached my retirement savings goal! So we shall see.