It is inevitable.
You being to make progress on a goal, or make major life changes and “Murphy” comes to visit.
Dave even mentions Murphy in his Financial Peace University.
Murphy is the guy who, right after you get your baby emergency fund done ($500-1,000), makes your car suddenly need $400 in repairs. Or lands your kid in the emergency room with hundreds of dollars in hospital bills.
I hate Murphy!
For us Murphy decided to show up BIG time within a couple months of me leaving my job and us now living on half the income we were used to.
In the span of about two months the following things happened:
- The dishwasher died – $400 to replace (deciding to invest in a good one)
- The Mazda repairs began to outweigh it’s worth; purchase new used car – $3,000 (added to the $1,500 we sold Mazda for)
- Went on paid for vacation to Hawaii during which there was an accident w/ the rental car – $1,500 (deductible plus rental agency “admin” fee)
- Dog got huge cyst on tail for the gazillioneth time, it burst, tail had to be amputated – $1,500 vet bills
If you do the math that’s a little over $6,000!!
In one of the FPU lessons Dave talks about the “security gland” women have that goes into overdrive when they start to doubt their financial security. Let me tell you, the security gland coupled with post-pregnancy hormones IS NOT PRETTY! I pretty much lost it in the parking lot of the vets office while writing a check for $1,500 for Mark to take inside.
Thankfully, after I calmed down, I realized how blessed we were that NONE of that money was going on a credit card. It was all covered by our emergency fund. Yes, it severely depleted it but at least we did not have that debt hanging over our heads.
On our smaller income it took some time to build the emergency fund back up, but once again God showed us the rewards of being faithful by providing some freelance work for me to do that helped.
So consider yourself introduced to Murphy. I hope that when (notice I didn’t say “if”) he visits you he is less brutal and that you are well prepared. Don’t be discouraged by his setback but keep plugging away.
- Part 1: The Early Years: In Love and In Debt
- Part 2: Joining Financial Baggage
- Part 3: Driving Our Debt Around
- Part 4: The Baby Years: Baby Steps, Baby Boy
- Part 5: The “B” Word: B-U-D-G-E-T
- Part 6: The Envelope System – It Makes Your Budget Work
- Part 7: The ever-important emergency fund
- Part 8: Dumping Debt
- Part 9: Freedom to Make BIG Changes
Thank you so much for sharing this. A few years ago, we started to follow Dave’s plan and slowly climbed out of all our non-mortgage debt and were about to start on that when we had a major setback. We were in the process of adopting two children from Ethiopia when our adoption agency went bankrupt, stranding them there. Obviously, we did what we had to do to get them home and went back into serious debt to do it. At the time, the huge setback seemed insurmountable and when we were quickly hit by other “Murphys” in the months after we brought them home (including a $4000 dental bill for them and one of our other daughters suffering a serious lung condition), it was easy to get discouraged and fall off the plan. That didn’t work well and recently, we have recommitted to becoming debt-free no matter the sacrifices. It is encouraging to hear of a family’s success with Dave’s program.