Sunday, May 17, 2015

Emergency Fund To the Rescue!!

Thursday, I came home from work and noticed the house was kind of warm.  I turned the thermostat down to see if the house would cool down. It didn't.   I was distraught. I cleaned the filter and turned the unit on and off.  Nothing worked.  I went outside and checked the outside unit and noticed that the fan wasn't turning.  I spent a very warm, humid night tossing and turning stressing about the cost to repair the a/c.

The next morning I called a local a/c repair shop to have a technician come out and take a look.  After anxiously waiting all day, a guy came out and repaired the unit within an hour. The capacitor on the outside unit had gone bad. It was fixed for a total of $200.  I had spent 24 hours terrified that I would have to pay for a whole new unit and use my entire emergency fund to do so.  I was so happy that the cost was only $200 and that I had the money in my emergency fund to handle it.

On Saturday morning I took my car in for a 90,000 miles service.  I knew it was going to be expensive so I set aside $650 out of my budget to cover the expense (I take my car to the dealer, it is a SUV and every 30,000 miles there is a huge service expense).  Anyways, I checked my car in and I had to have: (1)oil change,(2) tire rotation, (3) timing belt replacement and (4) water pump replacement. 
Ultimately, the total cost of the service was $750.  I was close to that amount with my estimate.  Again, I was happy that I had the money available to cover the expense.  I hate paying that kind of money into my almost 9 year old car, however, it beats a car payment. Also, I know taking my car to the dealer costs so much more than taking it to a regular mechanic shop, but there is a a very good mechanic at this particular dealership who has done very good work on my car in the past.  I hope to keep this car for 3 to 5 more years so I hope it keeps chugging along for a while more.  I just need to pull $100 from somewhere to pay off the balance of the car repair.  Budgeting and spending money is so stressful!!

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