Things happen every day that make you wonder. You know! You look down and find a $100 bill laying on the sidewalk. Terrific. What a wonderful unexpected occurance. Unfortunately, the number of good things that happen each day are usually out-numbered by the bad things. By the way, I’ve never found $100.
Not only do bad things happen regularly. They cost money. My tooth was bothering me the other day and my friendly dentist, Mr. Brightsmile performed a root canal. I don’t have the bill but my guess is $500. I remember thinking “not today”. Then your mother told me her back tooth was very sensitive to touch at which point I told her to quit pounding on it. You guessed it! Another root canal. Another $500.
I was driving home from my morning walk and my high tech Saab computer display was aranging numbers and letters in funny arrays. I haven’t had it checked yet, but I would bet on $200. Then I stopped for groceries, put the the groceries in to the trunk and noticed my back tire was going flat slowly. I had it checked. $20 to remove a staple. All these things happening generate a range of responses from “why is the big bird of happiness dumping on my parade” to a polite “not today”.
Yesterday it was our super sized, snob appealing Sub-Zero refrigerator. The highest temperature we could generate was 62 degrees on the non-freezer compartment. Milk doesn’t taste good at that temperature and the fuzz on the old chicken is yukky. So we called a friendly service man who tore apart the mechanisms and as all our food was sitting on the floor and wires were hanging out everywhere, he announces that we need a new thermostat costing $249. What are you going to do? So he fixed it. The big bird of happiness really annoys me. Again. “Not today”.
I am not looking for sympathy or a hand-out. My point is these things happen constantly and you can’t plan for them. I’m sure you can share many stories of incurring unexpected expenses that just seem to crush your budgets.
The solution. Save your money so that you are in a position to pay for the un-expected. There will be unexpected events. They should not “throw you for a loop”. You are entitled to say “Oh, shit”. Or if you want to clean it up a little, “Not today”.
Love,
Dad