There was a movie back in the late eighties. I don't remember the name of the movie, but I remember the basic plot. It was about a young woman who ended up becoming a sharp shooter (assassin) for a bad organization. She wanted out but couldn't find a way. The plot isn't important here, though. One line from the movie was "It's the little things.....". I quote that quite often and today it is appropriate here.
It's the little things....
It is the time that you thought you would have time to make dinner but couldn't because your car broke down, a meeting ran late, or you ended up having to take a child somewhere unplanned.
It is the time you thought all was going as planned and then the lights go out because someone ran into a telephone pole down the street or the wind was blowing too hard and a tree fell down.
It is the time when you were expecting to get paid for a job you did but the money didn't come in as fast as you thought.
It's the little things.
We sometimes get so wrapped up in preparing for big things that we forget about the little things.
It can be easy to think that if you get caught up in a meeting that runs late to just run through the drive thru and grab dinner or order take out and pick it up on the way home, but what if you don't have the money for that? What if you are tapped out for the month and don't have any extra discretionary money until your next payday? What do you do then?
It can be easy to think that the electricity will come back on quickly after a power failure. But what if you live a bit further away from town and it takes them a day or so to fix the problem? It could be an easy fix to stay overnight in a hotel or eat out. But what if you don't have the money for that?
What if you ..... had a budget where every month you put a little bit aside for these little emergencies? $20 a month - $50 a month - $10 a month It doesn't matter how much really but it does help to put this money aside.
We call this our little emergency fund. We put a bit of money in it each month and it is amazing to see how many little emergencies we end up having. It seems to us that as soon as we get a couple hundred dollars in there we end up needing it for something.
In the past we have used it on an emergency trip for a funeral, a hot water heater, a washing machine, and a two day no power situation where we just ate out instead of cooked on our grill. While we hated to have to use the money, we were so glad that we had it to use.
So I challenge you to start a "little emergency" fund. We keep ours in cash so we don't have to rely on getting it out of the bank. It never gets over a couple hundred dollars but that is okay. Little emergencies aren't usually that expensive.
