A few weeks ago I was at the beginning of a 2 hour drive back from a friends lakehouse with my brother when, in the 105 degree Texas heat, the motor for the passenger window broke and the window would not roll up. I spent the rest of the drive progressing in emotional state from pissed off that my brother broke the car (which he wasn’t at fault) to being flat out grumpy because I was so hot, to laughing so hard I cried because of how ridiculous we felt.

Have you ever noticed that setbacks always seem to occur at the worst possible time, and more importantly that they always occur to you? Your computer crashes the night before a paper is due, you get sick before new health insurance kicks in, or you get in a wreck just after you drained your emergency fund to get your transmission fixed. It never fails, Murphy’s law (or what my family has come to know as “Luck of the Bowen”) always seems to show up at the most inopportune times making life much more hectic.

Now take a second and think about all the incidents like this you have had in your life; where it seemed like something that ordinarily would have just sucked, happened at the most awful time.

In looking back, was it really that bad? I would guess not. I know that when I think about the events in my life where everything seemed to go wrong, I realize that whether it was a true catastrophic event or something as silly as the car window not rolling up I am the person I am today because of how I got through them and what I learned from them.

Being a member of the Bowen clan, luck of the Bowen is always in effect and it always hits the pocketbook. As a result Mary and I have taken what we’ve learned from past experiences and started some “hedge” funds to hedge our bets against the expenses that always come out of nowhere.

We have our emergency fund for general emergencies, so far we have managed to save away 3 months expenses if both of us loose our jobs, and 6-8 months if one of us loses a job. We feel like we are in a good place with our emergency fund, and we continue to add to it every month, but we realized that there were other things for which we needed to be putting money away in preparation.

The car window breaking led to us starting a fund to replace the car. After all it is 11 years old with 150k+ miles on it. On top of that, my Labrador continually eating things she shouldn’t (Christmas Ornaments, Bottle of Tums, the Couch, a Chair…) and our Chihuahuas overly expensive teeth cleaning bills ($600) led us to hedging our bets for the dogs and creating a pets fund in which we put money every month for when one of the big pet expenses comes up. (Yes, pets can be VERY expensive, but in my opinion they are completely worth it).

We created these additional funds because we have learned from past experiences which forced us to use credit cards when we didn’t have the money available.

On top of all of these things we are currently evaluating life insurance policies outside of our work coverage, because life is just that unpredictable.

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Everywhere I look small “upgrades” are popping up that I know I can find cheaper elsewhere, or that I can do myself without having to pay the builders up charge for, and it pains me every time I give the go ahead for them to do something else when I know I’m being ripped off.  I can’t haggle with them, I’m not in a position to.  I already signed the contract to build the house and put down earnest money, so I’m at my builders mercy.

Why would I voluntarily get ripped off you might ask?  Because as I plan ahead for all of our upcoming expenses like drapes, blinds, rugs, random furniture (although we have most), deposits on utilities, moving costs… It’s easier to lump it all in and finance it so that I’m not out anymore cash after I seemingly drain my accounts at closing, because I will not allow us to dip into our emergency fund for these items.  Really the only thing we aren’t having them do that they can is hang our drapes and install our doggy door ($350 for something I can do myself in a hour is too much for me to bare).

At the end of the day, and especially as our country is testing the waters of economic uncertainty, emergency funds are too important to tap into for non emergencies.  And I’m proud to say that even though we may be paying an up charge on these items, our emergency fund will remain in tact and actually grow a bit due to the rolling in of some of our closing costs, so in the case of an actual financial emergency we will have money to keep us afloat.

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