Hey y’all, I just need a little nudge to get my brain in the right frame.
I received a very nice annual bonus. YAY! Part of that was going to be a “fully” funded $2K emergency fund (we’re still in “turn the titanic” mode on funding it). The money was to hit the bank this morning… and it did. YAY!
The bad news. Last night, the dryer died. Based on a couple hours of diagnostics, I determined that it had finally gone past the point where continued repairs made sense, and the washer being the same age and showing signs of being near EOL, it ought to be replaced as well.
That’s all fine. What I need help with is getting my brain to stop listening to the “Dangit! We JUST got our E-fund to a nice value and we have to go spend half of it on new appliances!” and start listening to the “DUDE! This is EXACTLY why we set that money aside! We can just go fix the problem and not worry about where the money’s coming from, we won’t have to go into debt, and we STILL have a bunch of money in the emergency fund!”
It’s all just an attitude shift. But for some reason it’s hard to go from that negative angle to the positive. Could use some encouragement there.
(FTR: we’ve had this W/D set so long I can’t remember when we bought it, and I’ve been keeping them running with various repairs for years now. We’ve gotten our $$ worth out of these, and it really is (IMHO) time for a new set. I’m just in a funk because of having my $2K E-Fund goal yanked away literally hours before the money hit the bank.)
EDIT: Thank you all for responding!!! Based on the responses so far, I should probably add a few clarifying remarks. I didn’t want to share publicly much of my financial situation, since the post was supposed to be mostly about the emotional kick-in-the-teeth, but since y’all are making assumptions anyway…
- This isn’t the “I lost my job” fund. That’s a completely separate thing that’s already taken care of and I wasn’t even thinking about it re: a washer/dryer. This is the “new roof / hvac repair / appliance / car repair / etc.” emergency fund.
- We don’t do credit cards. Period. 0%APR or otherwise. Iv’e done stupid with 5 digits before and we are NOT going back to that. Ever.
- The house/car/appliance/etc. fund has had a number of recent kicks, from deductibles for a new roof (storm damage), HVAC repairs, a couple of car accidents (not our fault). $2K was our target for replenishing it till we finish off the 2%APR car loan. $2K has also been a decent funding level for it, but 2018 was tough.
- I understand the cash value of craigslist/freebies, but with appliances and such I prefer the “buy new and keep running forever” approach because I know exactly what has happened to it and how it’s been maintained.
- I’m by no means replacing the washer because I don’t like the color or I just want to upgrade. It’s as old as the dryer and while it’s running right now it’s had its share of problems and by my estimation we’d be replacing it some time this year anyway. By buying the set we got an additional discount over the sale price and the employee discount, and I can not worry about it for another 15-20 years instead of 6-12 months.
- By no means were the ones we ordered fancy models. They’re moderately decent models that we could easily afford to pay cash for. We’ll just hit our savings goal a couple of months later than planned. As I said above, this post was supposed to be about the emotional kick of Murphy getting in the way of a goal yet again, not about the actual finances. Bigger picture, those are in much better shape than I perhaps initially implied.