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.