I’ve mentioned before that we are Dave Ramsey geeks.
Our last momentous achievement was building our emergency fund. It took a long time, the adjustment of our thinking, some sacrifices . . . but we reached our goal last May.
Now, although we’re officially on the next phase where we have our investments going full force again, we’ve been surprised at the difficulty we’ve had in adjusting to this phase. The now-that-we-have-an-emergency-fund-how-do-we-use-it-wisely phase.
Don’t worry, I’ll get to the housekeeping analogy in a minute.
Basically, we’re learning through experience what we knew in head-knowledge.
Emergencies happen. Building an emergency fund isn’t the end. It’s the beginning of a new way of life.
When emergencies happen, you have to use the fund, but then you pay it back. Which means that the money isn’t there to make financial emergencies stress-free, it’s there to keep you from adding the additional stress of owing money to someone else.
Basically, it’s a discipline thing. You can have money in the bank, but when you spend it . . . it’s gone. You have to work hard, earn more, and put it back.
Being sick, I took Tuesday off. I couldn’t afford to take Monday off because I had guests coming who weren’t willing to sleep on the floor because I didn’t feel like cleaning off their bed.
As I snorted and sneezed and mouth-breathed all day Tuesday, I watched my clean-enough-for-my-mother-to-visit home fall into disarray. Laundry Day’s clean clothes lay on a recently vacuumed rug in my bedroom.
The dishwasher is only half empty. I got tired of washing my hands between every dish because I couldn’t stop sneezing. (I’m a germaphobe, remember.) Consequently, the kitchen is looking worse and worse as newly dirtied dishes have nowhere to hide.
It’s amazing how quickly taking one day off can send my home into chaos.
But because I’ve been doing so much better, (cleaning the kitchen every single day, generally picking up and doing basic weekly cleaning tasks) . . . I have a housekeeping emergency fund.
Yes, I’m having to borrow from my own clean house. I’m piling up clean laundry on what I’m thankful is a clean rug.
Get it? There’s actually something there to borrow.
For example, the above (totally embarrassing) picture, shows the pile of Kleenex next to my side of the bed. Dramatically thrown there during prolonged moments of self-pity and exhaustion so excessive that I was completely unable to aim for (or get up and move) the trash can . . . 4 feet away.
But my emergency fund is the fact that the side of my bed no longer looks like this:
Throw a bunch of Kleenex on that pile, and they blend in. Even when you pick them up in the name of your germaphobia, there’s a good chance you’ll miss a few.
When the house was in constant chaos, I had nothing to borrow from. Just like not having money in the bank means you pile up debt, my clutter piles just got bigger and bigger.
More overwhelming.
I’m going to feel better soon. Hopefully very soon. And when I do, I’ll have more to do than I would if I hadn’t been sick. If I hadn’t jumped off the deslobification track for a few days.
But thanks to my emergency fund, I now know that there’s a point to getting things back to where they were.
That it’s possible to get things back to normal.
Or at lease normal-ish.
*I’m feeling rather profound right now, but it’s very possible that it’s the cold medicine talking.
If so, please forgive.
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Awesome analogy! You are indeed profound 😉
"Emergencies happen. Building an emergency fund isn't the end. It's the beginning of a new way of life." SO TRUE!
We have discovered this as well. We've also discovered that the "living like no one else" part isn't exactly as glamorous as we had hoped for. No payments mean we eat without credit card debt. It doesn't mean we go to Tahiti. I have been retelling our whole DR story on my blog, and I'm hedging on doing this part of the journey – BS4/5/6, b/c frankly, it's a lot of 'now what??!?!?!' which doesn't "sell" a lot of copy if you know what I mean)
Girl, get yourself a trash can by the side of your bed.
Can I just say that I love you? Cause I do. And I made up my bed this morning 🙂
Your writing is really engaging! I enjoyed this post and the way you made parallels. I always throw tissues on the floor beside the bed. It's just a habit. But I pick them up when I get up the next morning. 😉
I do that when I'm sick too. Make a pile of used tissue next to the couch and scoop it up every time I get up to pee.
Delayed response, but just wanted to share that I use this analogy with my kids. They make deposits into their “accounts” every time they tell the truth, follow through on what they’ve said/promised, show acts of kindness. When they have a full account, it’s much easier to forgive or be understanding of mistakes or to let them have a little wiggle room. But when they’ve depleted their accounts, patience and understanding can often be depleted as well, making things “tighter” for them (just like our bank accounts!)
I often times let them know when things make a “big” withdrawal from their trust account with Mom/Dad (lying) and when they make a “small” withdrawal (not putting something away like they said they would). Figure accounting is a good analogy for school age children:)
That’s a great analogy for kids & actually, for us adults as well!
Well done you!! You can be really proud that your Side-of-the-bed-picture doesn’t even give a hint of slobbiness, just that you’re sick and dropping some Kleenexes on the floor. You could be, like, totally normal 😉 so here’s a virtual pat on the back 🙂 and thanks for reminding me what I’m building up my own housekeeping emergency fund for 🙂 get well soon 🙂
“Didn’t” not “doesn’t” . . . remember this was an old post . . .
My friends calls their fund “sleep money” meaning they can sleep at night with one less worry. Hubby and I have an emergency pool and encourage others to do the same. Hot water system died in middle of winter = no problem. Fixed next day.
Looking at your before picture makes me hopeful for myself… a little… I’ve been a recovering/relapsing slob for a good 15 years now of marriage, probably 35 years of life). I am better than I was in some ways (keeping everyday stuff under control) and worse in others (couldn’t care less if I get a room to a “perfect” clean, which I used to do in the past).
Yup. I’ve been sick for a full week with the flu. I did not have the energy to do many of my daily tasks while I was really sick, and even now I still have a lot of fatigue, but since I had been keeping up, it didn’t take too long to get back to the new normal, even though it’s taking me longer to get my dailies done due to fatigue. Plus, I found myself wanting to have the energy to do the dailies, which never would have happened 4 months ago