Putting our Emergency Fund to use

Yep, not so excited about it, but our emergency fund is really protecting us from a potentially financial mess this week.

Last week in the midst of all our Thanksgiving preparations and trip planning, our computer decided it has had enough. (A reason for the lack of posting this last week!) Anyway, we did see this coming to some extent, but had hoped we'd have a little more time to finish saving up for its replacement. We've actually been surprisingly calm about this situation that normally would have come as a huge disaster and create a lot of financial stress. We've got a plan in place to continue saving and hopefully be able to have our new computer within the next month or so. Thankfully, we have a back up computer that will get us by until then. It's nice to feel calm about this and not frantic about where the money will come from. Thanks to our budget we know exactly how much money we have and are able to set aside and are able to be realistic about when we'll be able to pay cash for it. We had considered using some of our emergency fund for it and I'm thankful we decided not to.

BECAUSE...yesterday, while driving home from our 13 hour trip to see my husband's family we broke down 15 minutes from home. (A HUGE blessing that we were close to family and friends that could help us and get our full van worth of stuff and us home while the van was towed to the shop!) Regardless, here we are again with a car in the shop! :( Ugh. We still don't know what the end result will be to this 'hiccup', but it's certainly an expense we hadn't planned for this month. Once again, I'm thankful that we are doing this budget and have the option of an emergency fund to draw from for these occasions.

It's been a week of breaking down for us and problem solving. I can't even express the gratitude and peace we're experiencing because we have a plan to handle these things financially. What had the potential to cause huge stress, chaos, arguments between me and my husband, and an overwhelming mess, has actually been the opposite. We've felt in control of the situation, knowing that it's not our plan or even how we'd like things to go, but at least we have some options of ways to handle these situations.

Once again, we are experiencing the benefits of this financial "overhaul" in our lives! :)