Luminous Laughter

When it rains, it pours

Let’s hear it for emergency funds.  It.  It, it, it!

While it was still winter, we decided that this spring we were going to finish our basement.  And get our garden in shape.  And as the weather warmed and our flowers started growing, it became very evident that we needed some kind of permanent separator between the flowerbeds and the grass, since our grass had its hands around the flowers’ necks and was choking them.  And right as spring started, Kim started feeling like it was time to get our one year supply of food filled out.  It turned out that we had about three months worth of food if we were trying to feed five people.

So we started on the downstairs, buying lots of materials and having lots of fun learning all kinds of things about framing and ducting.  We got more than half-way done before gardening season hit and we put it on hold so that we could get the garden in.

We discovered an exciting way of gardening without spending seven years amending our incredibly alkaline soil.  This, of course, entails building some above-ground gardens and buying real soil to fill the boxes with.

And we hired someone to do our edging.

So there we were with more than a thousand dollars in supplies for finishing the basement, several hundred dollars of supplies for creating a garden, and more hundreds of dollars for the edging.  Then about a thousand dollars to bulk up our food storage.

We figured the government was paying for a good portion of the basement via the stimulus payment.  We decided that we were putting too much money into retirement and not enough into the kids’ college savings plans.  So we pulled some of the money that was going into retirement to fund the food storage buildup for a few months (then it will start going into the kids’ plans).  The garden we figured we’d take out of savings and being a little extra frugal for a month or so.

And then the air conditioner stopped working.  We called the repair man, and he determined that we were basically out of coolant.  He thought it might be a valve leaking, so he replaced the valve and recharged the system.  $400 later, we had a working air conditioner.  For about two days.  We called the repairman back, and he determined that we were out of coolant again.  So he pressure tested the system and couldn’t figure out where the leak was.  So he refilled the system with coolant and an ultraviolet dye.  He then said to call him when the system stopped working again, and he’d come out and tear apart walls to try to figure out where the leak is.  Bleah.  $500.

So here we are almost $1000 into this A/C repair, and we haven’t even found the problem, yet.  That wasn’t in the budget.  Thankfully, we have a sizable emergency fund that we can draw from to pay for the repair.

I don’t know how people survive without emergency funds.  I get all jittery having less than a three-month supply of money that can be drawn from.  I’m reluctant even to pull money for things like this, which is really the point of having the fund in the first place.  I can’t imagine the stress that I’d feel if I had to put the whole thing on a credit card.