Lots going on in the ceejay household! As reported last month, I was laid off from my longtime job and my last day was June 2. I was the last person in my household with a full-time job; AS left hers about 10 months ago and NT was laid off during lockdown.

AS has been doing freelance work and talking to someone about a possible job opportunity; that will start in September as a 3-month contract, and if it works out it could become a full-time gig. NT has a half-time job and manages our rental property; he might look at going up to 3/4 time at his job in the fall. I'm currently on severance through August, and I've been booking some freelance clients. I actually think I could beat my old full-time salary with part-time work if I play my cards right! I have two clients already and that's without much networking or hunting. Both say they have tons of work, so if they like what I do for them initially, they could both be pretty regular/substantial sources of income.

Our rental property was vacant in May but we managed to rent out one half of it in early June. We're finalizing details with some renters who should move into the other half in mid-July. So we lost some ground but it's looking promising that we'll be set for a year.

My dad randomly gifted us $10K without even knowing about my layoff and that was a HUGE help in covering expenses and not accruing additional debt while the rental property was vacant. I was even able to pay off some appliance debt from our kitchen reno where the deferred-interest promo period was about to end.

On top of all that, the market is up, so it's been a great month for net worth--we're up nearly $40K! I checked CoastFIRE and while we don't have any set retirement contributions right now, if I managed to put in $500 each per month in our Roths and 10% of our projected gross income, we would be 5 years away from CoastFIRE, a considerable improvement. I have to go through and work out our budget through the end of the year with severance, booked contract income and new healthcare premiums figured in, but I'm hoping things look stable enough to start putting some toward retirement. We do need to also be rebuilding our EF and paying down our HELOC after our giant tax bill last year, so I won't be able to ramp all the way up probably, but I'm encouraged we might be able to make progress after spinning our wheels on retirement for nearly a year. (I did have my 401k going during that time but most everything else was put on hold.)

Honestly, even if we don't get to Coast that fast, if we're able to scale back from full time work and still be contributing to retirement, it'll almost be like we're ALREADY Coasting!! I am now prepared for whatever curveballs; I feel like I've fully accepted that we're not in control of our destiny, but it feels hopeful to try and control what we can, barring unforeseeable circumstances.

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.

Pretty good gain in retirement, about $10K this month. Coast FIRE now showing as 10 years away vs. 11 last month!

It's a very interesting and weird time for us financially. I wish I had time to blog here more frequently about it, but I've got so many things going on that I never get around to it! Let's see if I can sum up...

- Both units of our separate rental property are going vacant May 1. We think we have a renter lined up for June or July for one side; the other side's had some interest but none of it has come to anything. This means about a $5500 per month budget deficit.

- We're netting around $3500 on tax refunds and have $2K in the EF, so we can just cover the one month without borrowing. If both units aren't filled June 1, we may have to dip into our LOC.

- AS has freelance work lined up over the next several months, about $25K through September. Most of it won't start paying until June, but we know it's coming so may be able to help the budget shortfall (or at least help us pay down what we take from the LOC).

- I got a 3% raise, which honestly feels like a joke even as a cost-of-living raise since our expenses have gone up more like 20%-40% over the past year (utilities and groceries especially), but it's better than nothing. Netting about $150 per month more.

- AS is having some verrrry interesting talks with a guy she met through her publishing job; it's still too early to say anything definitive but she may have an exciting and lucrative job in a few months. It'll take a while for it to take shape and we're not sure when it'll materialize or what it'll mean financially, but it's super promising.

Long story short, our finances are feeling shaky and sketchy right now, but we're feeling pretty good about them turning around a bit (or maybe a lot) by the end of the year. Which is good since we still owe quite a bit on the tax bill and kitchen reno because of inflation and these income headwinds!

Slightly better retirement gains this month, though our CoastFIRE date moved from 8 years to 11 away...probably because I turned 49. Oh well.

It's been a pretty meh year financially so far... we still have $33K of debt for the tax bill and $3K owed on our kitchen and only $1500 in EF savings. The renters on our new place are leaving at the end of this month, so if we don't have both units rented by May 1, we may have to clean out our little EF and some other pockets of money. Hopefully it doesn't go vacant or if it does, only for a month or two.

Not a very interesting net worth update... our net worth went up by about $1300, mainly due to debt paydown, which means no Coast FIRE progress. Not much ground gained on paying down our tax bill but other than that things are fairly stable. Hopefully we'll make some progress worth writing about sometime soon!

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!

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

Last time I checked in (April), I was eyeing the possibility that we were only a couple years away from Coast FIRE. We had about $26K we'd taken out from HELOC and a zero-interest card for the kitchen reno, but I felt confident about paying it off.

Fast forward to early June. We expected we'd owe some taxes on the sale of the UK flat, but we'd already paid about $5K to the UK for capital gains, so we didn't think it'd be much in the US once they factored that in. We were wrong. We owed over $45K to the IRS and state.

We were able to pay it with our EF plus $30K on the LOC. I made the painful decision to make some cuts to our budget to pay pay down that amount on the LOC and save up $20K to rebuild our EF. We cut all retirement except my 401k, home improvement savings/repayments and charitable giving, freeing up about $4500 per month, so we figured we could have it paid off by March 2023 and restart retirement. The loss of 10 months toward Coast FIRE would be painful but not ruinous.

(Meanwhile of course our retirement funds continued to tank; we've lost 13% value in the past year.)

We managed to make better than expected progress on paying down the HELOC; $11,500 in about two months! But AS has been crumbling under the weight of her high-paying job for a few months, and things came to a head this month, necessitating her resignation.

Now the $4500 we'd cut from the budget is not quite enough to break even. So not only are we not putting much toward retirement, we're not putting anything toward paying back the tax bill either. So we're kind of stagnating.

But, the good news is I redid Coast FIRE and if we restarted retirement today, we'd only be 6 years from coasting. That's a loss of several years of coasting, but it's not as bad as I thought considering we've lost over $100K in retirement fund values.

Of course we can't restart retirement until we make more progress on the tax bill, but it's somewhat comforting.

Our current budget (which doesn't have retirement, home improvement or charitable giving) has us coming up about $1K short starting in October, but we've got two adults working on finding income to bring in, so covering living expenses won't be a challenge. The real challenge will be bringing in enough to quickly knock out the tax bill and restart our retirement contributions.

There have been so many financial hits I'm past reeling; the pandemic has had this kind of numbing effect where I'm always in a state of low grade stress that I don't notice, so other stressors sometimes don't seem to shock the system. (Other times relatively small stressors can completely overload my system, so it's all unpredictable.) We're just trying to be proactive. AS is restarting her self-employed writing/editing business and already has her first job lined up (writing a children's book for $700). NT has applied to a part-time job and is looking for more; meanwhile he's started doing DoorDash to bring in a bit. He also does a bit of work for our downstairs neighbors and manages our rental property, which is a vital part of our income. So we're fighting back, trying to regain momentum.

My plan is preliminary; maybe we'll end up restarting some retirement before we pay back the hole left by the tax bill. There may be other flaws in my calculations as well; we'll have to see how quickly our income comes back up and what other factors change. Because as many surprises as we've had, I'm not going to assume there are no more waiting around the corner! Hopefully there will be some good along with the bad surprises...

Meanwhile, I decided I should do a net worth and Coast FIRE status update. Fingers crossed this is a low point and we'll go up from here!!

Assets:

NT's UK pensions:

AV1: 22,397 pounds ($27,996)

SW: 27,225 pounds ($34,031)

AV2: 7,567 pounds ($9,459)

NT's trad. rollover IRA: $97,645

NT's Roth IRA: $63,092

NT's SEP/SIMPLE: $3,397

AS's trad. rollover IRA: $24,556

AS's Roth IRA: 88,082

AS's SEP IRA: $65,490

CJ's 401(k): $214,173

CJ's Roth IRA: $68,289

CJ/NT/AS house: $592,200 ($630,000 value -6%)

CJ/NT/AS rental property: $520,760 ($554,000 value -6%)

---

TOTAL ASSETS: $1,809,170

Debt:

Main mortgage $356,076

Rental property mortgage: $394,029

HELOC $38,500

Appliances CC $3,983

Loan from friends (duplex) $9,000

---

TOTAL DEBT $801,588

Current Estimated Net Worth: $1,007,582

April 2022 estimate: $1,110,372

Change in net worth: -$102,790

COAST FIRE:

We are currently only contributing $620 per month to retirement, so Coast FIRE is just a theoretical construct at this point. But if I assumed that NT and AS together can come up with $84K annual income, and if we can restart $1500 per month ROTHs plus put away 10% of their income, and if our rental property provides $1500 per month in passive income in retirement (which I'm reflecting in reduced expenses in retirement), we could potentially hit Coast FIRE in six years. Those are a lot of IFs in our current situation; if we only put $620 per month away, we wouldn't hit our retirement goal number by the time I turn 65. So clearly restarting contributions is a big priority, and hopefully we can do that earlyl next year.

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 6 years (I'd be age 54) from our Coast FIRE number of $1.072 million.

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: $2,561

Investment growth rate: 7%

Inflation rate: 3%

Withdrawal rate: 4%

Current invested assets: $696,210

Coast FIRE number at current age: $847,066

It's crazy that just under a year ago we had nearly $800K in retirement. We would be so close to Coast FIRE! But most of that loss was due to the stock market, so there's nothing I can do about that now.

Assets:
NT's UK pensions:
AV: 22,397 pounds ($27,996)
SW: 27,225 pounds ($34,031)
FL: 6,462 pounds ($8,078)
NT's trad. rollover IRA: $111,934
NT's Roth IRA: $66,268
NT's SEP/SIMPLE: $2,500
AS's trad. rollover IRA: $28,143
AS's Roth IRA: $95,092
AS's SEP IRA: $72,046
CJ's 401(k): $228,862
CJ's Roth IRA: $72,251
NT's flat: $212,500 (200,000 pounds value x1.25 -15%)
CJ/NT/AS house: $592,200 ($630,000 value -6%)
---
TOTAL ASSETS: $1,551,901

Debt:
US Mortgage $367,740
Loan from friends (duplex) $9,000
UK Mortgage 1 $25,813
UK Mortgage 2 $5,441
UK Mortgage 3 $5,730
---
TOTAL DEBT $413,724

Current Estimated Net Worth: $1,138,177

May 2021 estimate: $1,122,570

Change in net worth: +$15,607

Summary: I actually remembered to do net worth two months in a row, and it was a pretty good month!

Notes on the numbers above: House value estimates are usually approximate. UK pension values updated about once a year. UK asset values and debt amounts are calculated figuring $1.25 for every British pound (just to have a system, even though I checked the exchange rate and it's more like 1 to $1.38).

Assets:
NT's UK pensions:
AV: 22,397 pounds ($27,996)
SW: 27,225 pounds ($34,031)
FL: 6,462 pounds ($8,078)
NT's trad. IRA: $100,851
NT's Roth IRA: $56,572
AS's trad. IRA: $25,413
AS's Roth IRA: $82,315
AS's SEP IRA: $59,256
CJ's 401(k): $198,555
CJ's Roth IRA: $61,939
NT's flat: $212,500 (200,000 pounds value x1.25 -15%)
CJ/NT/AS house: $592,200 ($630,000 value -6%)
---
TOTAL ASSETS: $1,459,706

Debts:
US Mortgage $372,600

Loan from friends (duplex) $9,000
UK Mortgage 1 $26,970
UK Mortgage 2 $5,685
UK Mortgage 3 $5,988
---
TOTAL DEBT $420,243

Current Estimated Net Worth: $1,039,463

November 2020 estimate: $1,015,882

Change in net worth: +$23,581

Summary: The gains continued for another month and my household closed out 2020 with net worth millionaire status!

Notes on the numbers above: House value estimates are usually approximate. UK pension values updated about once a year. UK asset values and debt amounts are calculated figuring $1.25 for every British pound.

I never got around to calculating last month's net worth, so this represents the change over two months. But holy cow, what a surprise I came back to this month!

Assets:
NT's UK pensions:
AV: 22,397 pounds ($27,996)
SW: 27,225 pounds ($34,031)
FL: 6,462 pounds ($8,078)
NT's trad. IRA: $97,596
NT's Roth IRA: $54,171
AS's trad. IRA: $24,606
AS's Roth IRA: $79,044
AS's SEP IRA: $57,264
CJ's 401(k): $190,361
CJ's Roth IRA: $59,357
NT's flat: $212,500 (200,000 pounds value x1.25 -15%)
CJ/NT/AS house: $592,200 ($630,000 value -6%)
---
TOTAL ASSETS: $1,437,204

Debts:
US Mortgage $373,403
Loan from friends (duplex) $9,000
UK Mortgage 1 $27,163
UK Mortgage 2 $5,726
UK Mortgage 3 $6,030
---
TOTAL DEBT $421,322

Current Estimated Net Worth: $1,015,882

 September 2020 estimate: $965,842

Change in net worth (over 2 months): +$50,040

Summary: Wow. We're a net worth millionaire household. I don't even know how to comprehend that! 

A little over 13 years ago, in September 2007, I started tracking our net worth, and my initial valuation then was $54,903. Little did I know at the time that our condo had lost a ton of value when the housing bubble burst, so it was probably a lot closer to $0 than I realized. So we've essentially built up a million dollars of net worth in those 13 years.

Notes on the numbers above: House value estimates are usually approximate. UK pension values updated about once a year. UK asset values and debt amounts are calculated figuring $1.25 for every British pound.