The importance of an emergency fund

What a difference a year makes.  One year ago today was a Monday, much like any other.  My kiddo and I had gone to the store to get Easter eggs for his class egg hunt.  Like a lot of four year-olds, he had begged for some shiny toy and had thrown a temper tantrum when I wouldn't buy it for him.  When we got back into the car, we had a talk about stuff isn't important and how he had so many toys already (a lot of them are from my husband's childhood...my house looks like Toys-R-Us circa 1984 exploded).  Then we went home and made dinner and he asked to watch a movie before bed, so I let him put a movie on the TV in my room to start settling down.

About 30 minutes later, I got a weather alert on my phone.  It wasn't exactly unexpected because the EMA had warning of potential bad storms for a couple of days.  The dog had been pacing and, unusually, hadn't asked to go out all night.  But this was different, it was a tornado warning, not a watch.  I flipped the TV over to the legendary local weather reporter just as he was saying that there is a possible tornado heading towards my city.

And then the power went out.

That was the point where I decided that maybe we should get in the hallway for a little while.  I grabbed the kid and the blankets and pillows and set up "camp."  I told my husband to get in the hallway and gave the kiddo his tablet and turned the volume up as loud as it would go.

I've always heard that a tornado sounds like a train.  I never did really hear it over the kiddo's game noise.  I felt it.  My ears popped when the pressure changed.  What no one ever talks about is the smell.  The first sign that the roof had been breached was the overwhelming smell of pine.  At first I thought it was where the rafters of the house cracked, but when I stepped outside I learned that it was probably the 15 pine trees that used to stand in our yard.

Just as the all-clear was given, the reporter on the radio came back on and told us to sit tight because there was another one on the way.  We sat in that hallway, this time under a mattress, listening to the rain pour through the holes in the roof.  In total shock.  Thankfully, that one went north of us and caused only minor damage.  The NWS thinks that there might have been a third, smaller one nearby that night as well.  As that storm passed, the chainsaws started and they didn't stop for three weeks.

Once we were able to start gathering ourselves, and taking stock we realized that there were at least two trees down on the house.  One came down right above where we had been laying watching the movie.  It also punched a hole in the living room ceiling.  Another took out a corner of the back porch.  The car that had only been paid off for two weeks (the title had come in the mail only the day before the storm) was missed by inches.  All-in-all we were very, very lucky.  We lost 23 trees, and only two of them actually hit the house.  No one in town was killed and there were only a handful of injuries. 

Luckily, my in-laws who live three houses down were nearly unaffected.  They lost a gutter.  And they were out of town.  We were able to stay there for a couple of days until the cold got to be too much and we moved to a hotel.  We spent a total of 4 weeks in three different hotels.  And then another six months living with my parents, who also live on the same block, but were able to stay in their home.

And this is where the emergency fund comes in.  It was such a relief to be able to roll up to the hotel and reserve a week, and then another, without having to worry about what would happen if the insurance company didn't reimburse us in enough time to pay the CC bill (they did, BTW).  I didn't have to worry about whether or not I'd be able to cover deductibles.  We did have some out of pocket expenses.  And in the interest of full-disclosure, we did choose to go ahead and do some home improvement things that we'd been wanting to do.  And we chose to take on a little bit of debt to do that.  It's very low interest debt, secured by money in our bank account.  It's one of the few cases where we're not doing the mathematically "correct" thing, but instead doing the thing that works for us psychologically.

But the real moral of this story is that just because you've suffered one emergency doesn't mean that another one isn't right around the corner.  In April, the engine in my husband's car threw a rod and he decided to put a new engine in it rather than getting something new.  In November, he totaled my car, you know the paid-off one that survived the tornado.  I decided to replace it with something exactly like it.  Same year, same color, upgraded trim package, and many, many, fewer miles.  What can I say?  I believe in buying what I want and driving it for 10-15 years.  I figure that my now 5 year-old will drive it as his first car.  We paid a little more than insurance covered due to the low mileage.  Finally, last month, my husband got laid off from his job.  We're still doing okay.  Even have the ER built back up.  I'm not going to say the last year hasn't been stressful, but it's been a whole lot less stressful than it could have been.