Last year I fully intended to promote my book and also my daughter’s book at the Financial Blogger Conference. What happened instead is that Abby became seriously ill and we both missed most of the programs.
No networking for us!
Not only did we not have the chance to promote our work, the experience wound up costing us. She had to take extra time off work, and as a contractor, she doesn’t get sick days as such. She just doesn’t get paid.
I wound up spending about an extra $1,000 on extended hotel and rental car costs plus the change fee for my plane ticket. Wheeee!
Did any of that matter? No. And yes.
That’s the subject of my post today on The Simple Dollar, a piece called “The Painful Truth About Your Emergency Fund.” Obviously I would have done anything to help my daughter recover. Yet I learned something from the experience: that using your EF is really irritating.
Not because my daughter had the nerve to come down with a potentially fatal ailment, mind you. (Although she does have a history of this.) Not because it had taken me a while to save up that money.
No, it’s because the need to use the EF means something really bad just happened. Watching your cash cushion deflate just adds insult to injury.
Give it a read and see what you think.
Free help with your emergency fund
Recently I was interviewed on the Paychecks & Balances podcast. As with my first experience there, it was a stimulating conversation with hosts Rich (appropriate name!) and Marcus.
In that podcast I offered to send a free chapter from the original “Playbook For Tough Times” – the one about how to save an emergency fund even if you think you can’t. I make the same offer in “Your Playbook For Tough Times, Vol. 2” because that’s how much I believe in EFs.
If you’d like to get that chapter for free – seriously, no strings attached – then e-mail me at SurvivingAndThriving (at) live (dot) com. It’ll be in your virtual hands as soon as I read your message. You can also access it through the P&B website and save it to your desktop.
Bonus: Short-term discount codes for both books are available in the podcast show notes. Follow the above link if you’re interested.
Frugal hackery from MTN
I’ve been on a roll lately with Money Talks News:
“” – sounds counterintuitive, I know, and it’s not something that interests me personally. I like to pick out my own apples and I love checking the “manager’s special” bins. But I interviewed three personal finance bloggers – one of whom specializes in frugality – for whom online grocery shopping means decent savings.
“Stressing over money? Here’s how to stop” – Money is the top stressor for the average U.S. resident, according to a survey from the American Psychological Association. I offer seven tactics to help you get control of your cash and quit stressing.
“9 expensive cleaning supplies you can easily make for pennies” – Keeping house shouldn’t land you in the poorhouse. This article shows you how to save a ton. Or go ahead and pay $9 to $14 for a Swiffer refill bottle while the rest of us pay a couple of cents. Totally up to you.
“15 ways to slash your grocery bill you probably never considered – estate sale, anyone?” – Yes, I’ve bought pantry items at estate sales and I didn’t die. Not once! This piece offers other non-mainstream ways to save. Well, non-mainstream to some people. I bet that plenty of my readers already utilize at least one of those 15 frugal hacks.
“Moving back in with the folks? 7 tactics to help new grads survive” – If you’re the parent in the equation, read the article to your neomatriculate and have a little discussion about life.
And about reading me elsewhere: It’s my hope that you’ll leave a comment on these posts. Reactions to articles will help those editors realize that they really should keep paying me to write, because it gets the conversation going.
As I’ve said before, a solvent blogger is a happy blogger.
In other news
I recently learned that I’ll be speaking* at the Financial Blogger Conference. And I’ll be in great company: The panel includes Miranda Marquit of Planting Money Seeds and the Adulting podcast (among many others), Shannyn Allen of Frugal Beautiful and Abigail Perry of I Pick Up Pennies (who, as regular readers also know, has a side job of being my daughter).
Our topic is “blogging through the bad times,” i.e., when life hands you lemons turn them into pageviews. And speaking of FinCon17: It’s in Dallas this year and I hope to plan some kind of reader meet-up during the conference, which runs from Oct. 25 to 28.
Sadly, I was not one of the winners in the #FinHealthMatters competition – but I was chosen as a runner-up. Obviously I wanted to be one of the winners, both for the ego strokes and the fact that they’re getting their travel expenses covered.
On the bright side, even runners-up get some perks: Turns out my Miss Congeniality status snared me an invitation to FinX. This half-day event takes people into the world of the financially underserved population, i.e., the folks who do things like:
- Pay fees to get their paychecks cashed.
- Cover their bills via money order because they have no bank accounts.
- Use fee-heavy reloadable debit cards since they don’t have credit.
- Wire money to strapped relatives because they can’t send a check (let alone use PayPal).
It’s an eye-opening day even if you’ve been broke yourself, according to my daughter, who was one of the #FinHealthMatters winners last year. She wrote about FinX in a post called “How the unbanked get screwed.” I’m looking forward to working up some righteous indignation in a post of my own, once I return.
*Fun fact: I’m the only person who has spoken at every single FinCon. A small distinction, but mine own.
The MTN post on “Moving Back in with the Folks” was great. I’ll be using it for guidance when DS returns from his overseas teaching gig next spring. Thanks!!
Oh, good. The two of you could read it together and hammer out the details.
I read your online grocery article. I used grocery delivery for my home bound chronically ill mom, she has acquired brain injuries from strokes. There were too many errors and they delivered really bad produce. So the delivery service which was supposed to work for me as a caregiver was becoming a part time job. I hired a person to do the job for slightly more than the delivery cost but they also made sure the milk got into the fridge and put away the groceries for my mom.
As a caregiver, I stress about the slow and steady use of my mom’s emergency funds to pay her home health costs. It is a huge stressor to wonder when will the money runs out and my mom will have to go on government assistance and lose her home. Insurance companies pay for minimum care.
That sounds like an awful experience. The three people I interviewed really loved the service, and when two of them had minor issues (wrong brand, bananas too ripe, et al.) the store manager immediately made it right.
As for the government assistance: I hear you. I understand why the government wants people to use up their resources, but it’s hard on the sick person to think “now I have no money to leave to my kids.” My own mother never had to go on assistance but she fretted that she didn’t have anything to leave us. (I told her she had “left” us more than she could ever imagine.)
Thanks for reading, and for leaving a message.
I have learned, after mom has had multiple visits to a nursing home/rehab, if my mom goes into a nursing home there are still costs and I am going to be the one paying. Sure I would like to have something left to me, but I am more concerned about having funds available to get her better care. It may sound like a luxury but to have a home health aide show up every other day during my work week really improves my mother’s standard of care.
It makes an enormous difference. In my grandmother’s last few weeks of life a health aide stopped in to take her vitals, bathe her and do other things that my aunt (who had health issues of her own) couldn’t do.
This is what so many of us dread: being too ill to make our own decisions. I wish the best for you and your family.
I have to say it annoys me when people say they don’t want to spend their savings so they can leave something to their kids, so try to find ways to get on government assistance when they need nursing home care. That means tax payers are the ones providing the inheritance to their kids by taking on the financial responsibility for Mom or Dad before their savings run out. That is why you save for your old age, so you can take care of yourself.
It’s my understanding that if you want government assistance then you must spend down your savings, and that the powers that be cast a pretty jaundiced eye on the past few years’ worth of money use. If it looks as though you transferred a whole bunch of money/property out of your name, you have some ‘splaining to do.
I’m interested in learning about the “unbanked”. One year I closed my bank account and got a actual physical copy paycheck from my job to get bank on my feet and stop paying overdraft fees. That is when I just had gotten divorced and didn’t really know how to budget my money or expenses. I would just cash the check at the bank that it was issued to avoid fees and pay cash for everything else. It really helped me because once the money was gone, it was gone. Luckily things like electric bill and rent I would just pay in person even cell phone was month to month. It’s very interesting how in a few years 2010 to 2017 how much harder that would be and how we take for granted bank accounts or debit cards.
I’ll likely be writing about the experience. Stay tuned!
If I recall correctly, though, the FinX folks found out that they were assessed fees even when they did cash checks at the issuing bank. In addition, not everyone can pay bills in person: the office is too far away to get to and back from on a lunch break, for example, or too far away for someone who has no car.
Given how hectic life can be for the un- or underemployed (especially single parents), not having a bank account also means the potential for late fees. I pay all my credit card bills online in just a couple of seconds. But if I had a sick child and neglected to write the check and then go buy a stamp for it until the last minute, it would probably arrive late and I’d get dinged both by the card issuer and the credit reporting bureaus (which hate late payments).
As for prepaid debit cards….Grrrr. Don’t get me started.
Hi Donna,
I hang out with a group of knitters, who said that you can knit your own Swiffer covers (don’t know what kind of yarn), then toss them in the laundry when they get dirty. That also helps save costs.
As for a boost for savings, there is an organization called AAA Fair Credit. They offer classes for financial management but for qualifying individuals, offer a three-to-one match on saving for a car, education, or housing up to $1500. If you go through their program, you can essentially end up with $6000–at least in Utah, where I live. They have offices in Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah. It’s a great program!
I’ve written about individual development accounts before. Sounds like I should do an update.
Interesting about the Swiffer covers. Right now I’m using a washcloth that someone crocheted out of an almost string-like material. It works! If you can’t knit, you can make Swiffer covers from those microfiber cloths from the dollar store.
Emergency funds are worth every sacrifice. Easier said than done I know, but if you think about not having money when you had to go to a hospital for an unexpected illness you would think twice about buying that designer dress or that fancy car that you don’t really need.
A piece of flannel cut also makes a good floor duster, just make a cover out of old flannel pj’s.
Good idea! I don’t have one of these Swiffers at home, but maybe next time I visit my daughter I’ll remember to bring a piece of our worn-out flannel sheets.
I inherited my Mom’ Swiffer with a full box of covers and two nearly empty jugs of secret sauce. A quick You Tube tutorial later, and the jugs are now filled with homemade cleaner. When I need covers,thanks to you, I’ll know what to do. I rarely use it, but on occasion it comes in quite handy.
Off to follow links. Must say, I miss TSD and GRS and even MSN Money (lookin’ at you, Donna), from the early early days. Glad you never stopped writing here or got overly monetized. Thank you.
Thanks for your kind words. And yeah, the personal finance blogosphere has changed a lot since the early early days.
Monetization is something I’m not really good at, which is in itself a choice. While I don’t want to sell things day and night, it *does* help to have a little money coming in. That ISP won’t pay for itself.
Emergency funds have gotten my family through my own sepsis diagnosis and hospitalization 8 months ago and recovery since. I am so thankful we had fund that as well as great family emotional support. I hope your daughter is recovering and feeling better. (I was not prepared for the length of time my recovery would take nor the toll on my body- I am only 50 but feel much older still on some days.) I have only returned to work part time this fall, but because of our emergency fund and some budgeting changes, we have been able to make it work. Now, we have to begin to restock that fund (the hard part)! Again, best wishes to your daughter.
Thanks for your kind words, and sorry that the condition took such a toll on you. I’m glad that you are able to ease back into work. That EF surely will help.