Huzzah for our blogs being back! I would really hate to lose this community and the hundreds of blog posts I've done over the past 9 years or so...

Due to good cashflow I paid back everything we borrowed from the HELOC this year (not counting the $27K total borrowed over previous years that we're still carrying). We've got the boiler to pay for in September, so I'll definitely borrow from the HELOC again, but it's nice to have it even temporarily paid down!

Net worth increased a little due to paying down the HELOC, even though the markets were flat to slightly negative again. According to my current calculation method we are still in Coast status with a surplus. I've mentioned how I think I'm underestimating our spending in retirement but also haven't really factored in Social Security, so I wasn't sure how close that was. I asked Claude (AI) to create a function to calculate if we started drawing SS at age 70 but covered spending with our retirement funds before that and had it calculate a much higher spending level and a lower retirement age, and the good news is, even with having me retire at 57 instead of 62, it came up with basically the same result as my current Coast calculation!

We still clearly need to get our current income/spending in balance before we can take any calculator or thoughts of retirement seriously, but it's very encouraging in light of how challenging this year has been so far.

Given this year's budget uncertainty, I'm still wavering on visiting Thailand in 2027, which is my dream vacation I was hoping to at least reserve airfare for this year. Tracking prices and they're holding steady, and I think they will for another month or so, so I'm kicking that decision down the road.

Original Coast calculations:

Adding Social Security to the picture: