The Best Reason to Have an Emergency Fund
27 September 2007
by
Jb
Filed under
News
Fear not dear readers, I have not disappeared, I have only just escaped the mountain of work I was buried under at my new job. I’m 6 weeks into my new job, and things are going swimmingly.
I wanted to highlight the whole idea of emergency funds again, because it appears I will have to dip into mine this week. I spoke about emergency funds a few weeks back, and how I have been very diligent about depositing money into it. This week showed me again how handy it is to have the funds available should I need it for something unexpected. While driving into work this week, a teeny, tiny stone flew up and hit my windshield. By the end of the day I had a large crack develop on the windshield. What got me angry about the whole thing is that I had already replaced my windshield once before in the last 12 months, because I had another crack. I have never had such bad fortune with a vehicle as I have had with this one, so I will be exploring options on getting rid of it sooner rather than later, but more on that in another post. Here is a picture of the crack:
This time around I will be submitting a bill to the Ontario government, as the chip occurred on a stretch of a provincially-maintained highway on which they were doing some road resurfacing. The same thing happened to me last year on another highway in the area, and I didn’t think to submit anything to the government for reimbursement, but I will definitely be doing so this year. Because my car insurance deductible is $1000 (this saves me on my monthly payment), there’s no point in submitting a claim for that, but besides, I probably wouldn’t anyways even if my deductible was lower. I wouldn’t want my rates going up because of that. As a sidebar, isn’t that always strange, that you end up paying more on your insurance when you use it? Why is that? I mean, you get the insurance so you can use it, right? Anyways, I digress.
As I was saying, I will be submitting a claim to the government for any sort of reimbursement they’d like to give me. Even if it’s only $100, that’s fine, because it’ll cost me over $700 to get the windshield replaced. Any assistance is welcome.
This is why my emergency fund will come in handy, as I’ve got more than enough to cover that. Of course that depletes the fund somewhat, but that’s all right, because that’s what it’s for. I’m just annoyed that yet again, I’ve got to use it.