It feels a little like kicking folks when they’re down to talk about emergency funds right now, because with this pandemic either you’ve got one and are likely using it, or it’s probably not the easiest time for you to start building one.

But again the pandemic, like so many events, is an inconvenient sprinkle of a storm for some and a massive, ship-sinking superstorm for others – though in the arts and live events, we have a lot more people in superstorm territory than a lot of other fields right now.

It can be hard to give emergency fund advice because everyone’s situation is so different. I do have to say that the pandemic has emphasized the importance of emergency funds to me. I have worked a combination of W-2 and 1099 jobs my whole career and when I applied for unemployment this summer, I qualified for a whopping $145 a week because the majority of my 2019 income was 1099 – despite years of paying into the system with W-2 work too, all that mattered was the last five quarters of work (I was totally naïve to how this entire system works and it was a fairly brutal wakeup call).

I can’t even imagine trying to get through the month on $580. My health insurance alone is more than half of that.

In addition to that sum being kind of ridiculous, there was the delay. I finally got my first deposit from them the last week in September. Which means if I had zero money coming in and no savings, I would’ve used my credit cards, right? Because what else could I do? So I would be paying interest on at least $1740 that I should’ve already been able to pay off due to a legitimate unemployment claim – but the state of NJ won’t have to deal with that additional interest, I would’ve. And that interest number would be even larger with the additional Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation ($600/week) factored in, if I had (quite reasonably) assumed I would be receiving that too (and if all the acronyms confuse you, they confuse me too – a fellow stage manager and blogger has a most excellent post that makes sense of them all here and she kindly pointed out my initial mistake when I initially referred to the $600 as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance).

Fortunately, for several months there was an additional PUA claim for many in the form of $600/week, but as far general emergency planning, hopefully there will never be another pandemic. And even in this pandemic, the PUA ran out and the government doesn’t really seem to care or have a timeline in which they plan to address this.

All of this leads me to how grateful I am to have an emergency fund.

I started funding that emergency fund when I was on a shoestring budget and it felt like every time I finally hit an exciting milestone and felt some of the pressure come off, some dumb thing like an emergency filling or an exploded tire would eff up all my progress and I’d be back at square one.

Despite that seemingly endless slow start, my emergency fund is solid now after working on it for 8 years.

Here are the goals I tried to aim for while funding it (I’m still working on that last step now, it’s not there yet):

• $100
• $500
• $1000
• $5000
• 6 Months of Expenses
• 1 Year of Expenses

I feel like getting to $100 was in some ways the easiest. All of those little frugal hacks you see on the internet got me there. The problem was that any little issue drained the sucker.

A few things I did on the side to reach $100:

• Babysitting
• Mystery Shopping
• UserTesting
• Collecting Coins
• Couponing
• Transcribing

Let’s be real, sometimes that first $100 feels extra impossible when you’re stretched so thin. The very small silver lining, is that if you can just manage to squeeze a few dollars out of one or two of those things and commit that money to the emergency savings, you can hit the $100 goal in a month or two.

But you’ll probably re-hit the $100 goal a few times before actually hitting the $500 goal, because, again, tiny emergencies wipe out tiny emergency savings.

But a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step, right?

Honestly, to get up to $500 and $1000, I used a lot of the same methods. I think I also felt a little spurred on by initial success, so I spent some time researching more frugal methods and doing things like calling my cable provider and demanding a lower rate or my credit card company and seeing if they would reduce interest rates.

And I just plugged along. It took like 2 years to reach those goals.

All of the larger goals were also achieved in that wildly unsexy manner of just plugging along. All the while, getting a little better at personal finance and creating more cushions in different areas that I could funnel into emergency savings.

So many people in the arts are freelancers and gig workers, which means that we regularly don’t have access to unemployment insurance. This makes an emergency fund even more important.

Another thing worth considering is purchasing your own disability insurance. While you are still covered by workman’s comp for injuries you sustain at work, you’re likely to need some replacement wages if you get injured – especially if you work as a circus performer or rigger or any other very physical job (though actually any job, even a company manager just sitting at a desk most days, can still get injured).

I think emergency funds are one of the least glamorous aspects of personal finance, but the most functional. Not only in saving your behind when things are going off the rails, but also in providing a sense of safety and security when times are good.

What are your emergency savings goals?