An Elegy for a Fully Funded Emergency Fund | brokeGIRLrich
I am thinking about buying a house.
I also want to actually have the funds to complete this accounting degree.
And there is a new managing company at Big Apple Circus that is making everyone kind of miserable and I can see the writing on the wall that either I’m going to stay and be miserable or maybe it’s almost time to move on.
All of these thoughts have led me to reevaluate my emergency savings and make me realize maybe it’s not quite enough anymore.
Which is like… a major bummer, dudes. Do you remember the celebrations when I finally hit my goals there? Because I totally remember how excited I was when I hit $1,000 – even though it was nowhere near my real goal.
I remember how $10,000 seemed impossible. Like, who has $10,000 sitting in a bank account? That’s just madness.
But you know who has $10,000 sitting in a bank account these days? It’s this girl.
You know what’s even cooler about having a comfortable emergency savings account? I was so used to funneling money into it that when I hit that goal, I looked at my medium-term savings goals and some more investing goals and just kept throwing that money at them.
It makes me kind of depressed to know I might have to beef that sucker up if I’m going to meet all my goals.
And I get that the world’s smallest violin should be playing now. The thing is though, you all are kind of following my financial journey here, so if you’re at the “how on earth am I expected to sock away $1,000 phase of life” (especially if you’re a young stage manager), I can tell you that eventually you too can get past that stage and have a financial journey full of problems worthy of the world’s smallest violin.
So total my tiny violin is playing a funeral dirge for my fully funded emergency fund as I realize that, if I were totally unemployed – and in my experience, it’s not uncommon to be unemployed for one to two months if you leave a gig like mine without a plan – and I still want to hit the other life goals I’m aiming for – then my emergency fund is no longer fully funded.
It was a great emergency fund. It’s covered every emergency I’ve had for the last 10 years. Any unexpected dental, car or eyeglass issues. The stupid expensive medical bills I have once in a blue moon for needing something crazy – like a blood test or an X-ray.
It did me well for a long time, but the times, they are a changin’.
It goes back to that idea that the real number you need to hit with an emergency fund is the one that lets you sleep well at night and currently, a rough medical year and a mortgage would knock out that fund in about 3 months. If I’m going to own a house, I think I’d sleep better with a 6 month fund.
So I think I’m going to sleep better if I start bumping it up toward $15,000.
