Twas another bleh month for net worth. We lost about $13K of value in our retirement investments, offset by paying down about $9K of debt. (Some of that was paying down our HELOC since we have a decent checking account cushion for now, but if our income struggles continue I fully expect to take that $7K back out again.) We still have a healthy Coast surplus, so no worries on that front for now.

My project offers from my regular clients have fallen off a cliff; I've barely gotten any new job offers in the past 2 months which is highly unusual. I don't know if this is a symptom of their clients (they are all agencies that work for businesses) opting for cheaper AI-generated copywriting or just a random blip, but of course it doesn't feel great. I've been applying for remote part time or short-term contract positions but the only nibble I've gotten is (ironically) for an AI trainer job. I did accept it but either they're lying that people can do the work as quickly as they say or I'm just not cut out for it, because it takes me about 3x the estimated time to complete each task, which cuts my hourly average from $65 to about $22. Not awesome, but at least I'm making little dribs and drabs of money while I try to get better-paying (and less tedious) work.

The other thing dragging me down is my dad's got a tumor in his kidney and needs to have surgery soon. So of course that's the perfect storm of worrying about my dad (he's pretty old to be having surgery plus we don't know what type of tumor it is), my time (getting work and other things done), and my financial situation (when he does get the surgery scheduled I'll be looking at last-minute one-way airfare which I'm guessing will be super expensive because of the fuel crisis plus last-minuteness).