If you have read How to Avoid Holiday Hazards at Home, you’ll remember that even your most anticipated holidays can make your bodies and your pockets broke when least predicted. That’s why it’s ideal for you to always expect the unexpected.
To start your preparation, let’s talk about how to solve the financial crisis you usually face whenever disasters or accidents happen.
What’s Emergency Money?
Emergency money, also known as an emergency fund, is a stash of cash you keep to cover surprise expenses in the future. These unplanned expenses are deemed to be very stressful that it can actually make you feel desperate and annoyed.
Such unplanned expenses can also come from many different causes, which could include accidents, job loss, home repairs, medical/dental treatments, immediate educational/work requirements, or unplanned travel expenses. It could even be a combination of any of the mentioned reasons.
So Why Do You Need This?
There are plenty of reasons you can cite to explain to yourself why you need to save your own emergency fund. However, in this blog, let’s enumerate the positive ones.
Keeps You Ready For Any Accidents
A broken bone will hurt your body but an empty pocket will hurt your soul. If you’re injured and you haven’t saved up enough money for it, you can only blame yourself for drowning in tears and regrets later.
When you have no money to pay for your medical expenses, how will you get yourself treated immediately? Will you wait until money pops out of your imagination? How will you magically earn money when you’re not even fit to work? Will you get a loan for it? Are you sure you can pay the interest?
Will you borrow money from friends and relatives? Are you sure they can and they will lend you some? Most importantly, can you put that stress on the people you care about the most? Think about it.
If you are unsure about any of these, it’s important that you keep a sum of cash. This way, no matter how difficult things will be, you’ll have a way of dealing with your mishaps even if they come your way repeatedly.
Keeps You Stress-Free
Aside from accidents, there are also other unknown expenses that you might encounter in the future. For example, you might have immediate unemployment, disaster, and travel expenses but have no spare money to spend. Just thinking about those possibilities can be stressful for you, right? Then, thinking about those crises without you having any funds to solve them immediately can be traumatic.
You might not be aware but we have the ability to overthink when it comes to life protection and security, and it does not just include our physical being. This is the reason why we desire to be financially secure. So just the thought of lacking the means to overcome financial troubles will keep you up at night.
You have already a lot of things on your plate to think about. Would you want to add this too? You’ll never know when that dreadful time will be, so keep yourself stress-free by saving up for your future needs.
Keeps You From Spending on a Whim
It’s payday so it’s time for unlimited shopping, right? Wrong. No matter how much money we have left in our account, we can’t actually spend them all at once whenever we want to.
“But it’s my hard-earned money and I deserve to pamper myself for once.”
Are you sure you can afford to do that now? Yes, it’s your hard-earned money but if you keep thinking this way, there will be a time when you need it the most and you don’t have any of it left.
You might be sick or injured or you might lose the job that’s generating that income someday. When that time comes, can you pay the hospital bills with the clothes and accessories you bought on a shopping spree? How about your everyday meals? Can the expensive junk food you ate on your payday be worth it when your family will have nothing to eat?
It’s okay to pamper yourself, but not until all of your family’s present and future financial needs are secured. Once you do, then you can truly enjoy that vacation, travel, or shopping spree worry-free.
Keeps You From Making Bad Decisions
Impulse spending is something most people are guilty of doing. Maybe even you do this sometimes, but you’re just not aware of it.
If you’re not familiar with it, well it’s really just spending on a whim. However, it’s important to cite it here because most of our bad financial decisions come from the urge to buy things we don’t necessarily need but we want to have.
If you are saving for your emergency fund, then you’ll prevent yourself from making these bad decisions. It’s because whenever you try to buy impulsively, your brain will constantly remind you of the future unplanned expenses you might have.
That’s how saving for your emergency fund becomes a habit that can help you avoid spending badly.
Keeps You Financially Stable
The last and most important reason why you should save your own emergency money is to be financially stable. If you know how to allocate all your income properly, you’ll have plenty to spend on your wants and needs in the future.
Most people don’t have the freedom to get to places they want to go, to eat the food they want to eat, and to have the things they want to have because of the loans they are currently paying from the bad decisions they previously made. If you don’t have extra money saved for the unexpected events, you’ll eventually become one of the majority of the population that are drowning in debt
Avoid this situation as much as possible. Save ahead and spend later. This is the only way you’ll get and enjoy the retirement plan you truly deserve.
These are the top reasons why you need to save emergency cash. If you are aiming to keep yourself from worries and stress, remember to strategize an emergency money plan ahead. Don’t wait before it’s too late. Be positively practical and start planning now!