Emergency Funds FTW

December 1st, 2016 by Potato

I don’t want to risk having my personal finance blogger license revoked, but I haven’t been paying attention to our budget as we deal with Wayfare’s recovery. I’m pretty sure we’re spending a bit more than average — we’re certainly eating more pre-made food, and spending more on drugs and parking and a walker, but much of that pre-made food is brought over by family and friends.

I actually haven’t been thinking or worrying much about money the past few weeks, which is as it should be. Early on my mind would wander to the topic and I’d try to crunch numbers as I rode the subway, without the benefit of a proper spreadsheet. But at some point I internalized the message that we’ve got an emergency fund and we’ll be ok. So I stopped worrying and focused my energies elsewhere.

And really, that’s what emergency funds are for, so you can make it through these completely random, crazy events without also having to worry about money in the short term.

TTP is a very rare disease, with an incidence of about 3 in a million. But that means that next year about 100 families in Canada will be hit by this. Another 200,000 or so will face a cancer diagnosis. Some others will be hit by a job loss, or a major repair bill.

As financial literacy month draws to a close I just wanted to quickly underscore how important it was to be savers when times were good, so that we could make it through a trying time like this. Yet many Canadians don’t have an emergency fund (here’s one survey that says a quarter have less than $1000). I mostly focus on investing stuff — it’s important too, and where I can actually make a difference — but emergencies can strike at any time. I don’t know what to say to all those people to get them to start, but having an emergency fund is important. I don’t know how we’d be handling this situation without it.

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