by Ashley
Isn’t this just Murphy’s Law? Anything that can go wrong will go wrong? Especially when a HUGE goal is just on the horizon, mere weeks away!
So I guess this is just life but I’ve got to report to you all with some disappointing news today. News that may impact our January 2016 target date for becoming consumer debt-free. Sigh.
We’re going to have some big unanticipated expenses this month.
First (and the smaller of the unexpected expenses)….I broke part of our dishwasher, and almost caught our house on fire in the process. I really can’t explain it well because I don’t know what all the parts are called, but I tried to take apart some of the inside pieces in the dishwasher to clean them. When I put it back together, apparently I didn’t do it correctly. The next time I washed a load of dishes, the part came apart and landed on the heating mechanism, which caused the dishwasher part to melt (and smell like an electrical fire!!!) Luckily, I caught it in time before major damage had occurred and the dishwasher isn’t totally ruined. However, to replace the broken part it cost $100!! What the heck!? Seems like price-gouging to me, but it’s a necessary replacement.
Dishwasher fix = $100
The second (and larger) expense really, really bums me out to have to talk about. Basically, hubs was in a car accident. It wasn’t terrible, and no people were hurt. He was driving home and stopped at a red light with cars in front of and behind him. The car behind him plowed into him and pushed his truck into the car in front of him. From hubs’ perspective, the entire wreck was the fault of the person behind him. But the police officer who responded to the scene cited the driver behind hubs for causing the incident (not sure what the official citation was) and cited hubs for being too close to the car in front of him. So, ultimately, the person behind hubs is responsible for the damages to our vehicle and we are responsible for the damages to the vehicle in front of hubs.
Deductible = $1,000. We had $250 in our car repair account. This leaves $750 to be paid out of pocket.
Vehicle fix = $750
Can you say OUCH?
And now I’m left doubting myself. We’ve had this super thin emergency fund. It’s continuing to be stripped so we now have no buffer in our car repair fund, only a couple hundred in our annual expenses fund (should be revolving closer to $500ish), $400 in our dental/health/vision fund (should be revolving closer to $1,000ish), and that’s basically it. Still some small balances in other various accounts (pet expenses, birthdays, and travel/Christmas – though the Christmas fund will be depleted this month), but very little buffer between us and disaster. That was all well and fine when I was hoping to be consumer debt-free this month and start re-building our savings in January but that’s no longer going to happen.
In fact, with these huge expenses (particularly the vehicle one), we may not be able to hit our debt free goal in January either. And now we’re talking about pushing back these dates far enough that I start to be nervous about not having a good EF security net.
Also, I’ve been working on some projections for 2016 and am a little disappointed in myself. Even if we hit the consumer debt-free mark in January, it would take us probably an additional 2-3 months to re-stock our savings to a level where we feel comfortable. So we’re talking about being nearly a third of the way through the year before we’re really able to start wailing on some debt again. I wish we had big Christmas bonuses or something that could really jump-start the savings and get us back into debt-reduction mode faster, but neither of us has a job like that.
Soooo, yeah. I’m a bit torn. Continue on our current path, pay these new debts, and try to become consumer debt-free as soon as possible (January or February at the latest, knock on wood), or sloooooow down just a step so we can get some Emergency Funds back into our bank account so that we are better equipped to deal with any unforeseen disasters.
Also, as an aside, pretty sure our insurance is going to go up. Boo!
But all this being said, I like to count our blessings. We have done a kick-butt job this year with paying down debt and we are proud of our hard work! We’re in a great position for 2016 to be our year! Becoming consumer debt-free, building up some savings, buying a house (!!!) and starting to tackle the student loan mountain. It should be a great year!
