Thursday, October 13, 2011

In Case of Emergency...

Broken Piggy Bank
photo credit
We have always had an emergency fund, not a big one but enough to get us by when unexpected things come up.

One such time was when my husband was laid off a couple of years ago. Between unemployment and our emergency fund we were able to get through four months of him not working without having to worry if we would be able to pay the bills or put food on the table. It really did feel good to not have to ask for help from anyone- we even hosted Christmas and you would have never known that my husband was unemployed.

Recently we got a lovely surprise from the IRS- we messed up on one of our tax returns and owed about $400. Now, normally if this were a five or six years ago we would have crapped our pants and wondered how we were going to pay considering the IRS doesn't take credit cards. But at this point in our lives it was no big deal. We have the money in our emergency fund and I was able to write out the check and mail it right away.

I sometimes get discouraged when I look at our emergency fund/savings and see that it is not a huge amount of money but times like this make me realize that having something put away is better than nothing. So if you don;t already have an emergency fund what are you waiting for? Go start one! Any amount you can set aside is great because you will get so much piece of mind in knowing that you have cash available to help you get through the little speed bumps that life tends to throw at all of us.

No comments:

Post a Comment