I tried the following and seems to work
cell y12: =TODAY()
cell y13: =EOMONTH(X12,0)

so therefore I now refer to these cells instead

cell x14: =IF(y12()y13,y13,IF(MIN(I8:I10)=X12,MIN(I8:I10), "*-"))

But I still dont know why taking these functions into their own cells
works, or why what I originally had stopped calculating in the first
place. I would very much like to hear ideas about this.