New Credit Cards

We received two new credit cards in the mail today. They were renewal cards for ones that were due to expire this month. I took those two card and put them straight into the shredder! I did not even allow myself to think twice about it. I know myself pretty well.....if I allowed myself to think about it I could have talked myself into putting the cards away in a "safe" place in case of an emergency. That is exactly the thought process that has gotten us into this debt mess. This just proves that I have to get that emergency fund done so we will have it for a "real" emergency.

Hurricane Ike has done one thing for me........It proved that I have to have a emergency fund!!!! I will never be caught in the same situation as I was during Hurricane Ike. I did not have nearly enough emergency money put aside. I have read Dave Ramsey's advice that you need to have $1000.00 in an emergency fund. That is not nearly enough if a real disaster occurs. I know......we lived it. For Example........if you had to leave your home for a disaster, here is what you would be looking at.

Gas to leave $500.00 (these are estimates)
Hotel for 4 nights $400.00 (that is if you can find a cheap one)
Food for 4 days for a family of 4 $320.00 (if you have to eat out every meal) plan for the worst
Grand Total $1220.00

Once you return home you don't know what you are going home to, so I will use our situation as an example. We had some major clean up but no structural damage to the house. We had to buy a generator and 100 foot extension cords. Gas for the generator for 13 days, gas to run the chain saws, ice because we could not drink the water, bottled water, charcoal and lighter fluid because I have electric cook top, sandwich meat and bread, chips, groceries to cook on the BBQ pit caused we lost everything in the freezers. We will have a generator for future use which we should have had already.

All that totaled around $1050.00 dollars. Due to the electricity being off in most places it was very difficult to find gas, so when you found a store that had electricity with fuel you waited in line for 1 to 2 hours. We bought our lunch meat and frozen item at the location we were staying at before we came home. Most of the store were not selling any produce or meats due to everything they had in stock ruined. They had to sanitize the coolers and have them inspected before they were allowed to sell any cold items. That was around two weeks after the storm. My total out of pocket expenses was around $2300.00 which does not include the generator. The generator was $895.00. We were very lucky cause most people had it so much worse than we did. My goal for our emergency fund will be $3000.00.

I think when you are planning how much you need for your emergency fund, it is important to consider what type of disaster are you pron to in your area. Plan your emergency fund amount according to those type situations. It is very scary when you are facing an emergency crisis and you are not financially prepared. I have never be so scared in all my life. My mind kept going back to the thought "What if we go back home and have NOTHING left?" Ask yourself that question and really think about it.....What would you do? Most people would say we will survive. That is very true, you will survive but the stress it causes can be very overwhelming. So, for our future I will try to have a plan in place so that we can relieve ourselves of the undue stress. Those situations are stressful enough without adding financial stress when you don't have to.

Hurricane Ike

Sorry I have not posted sooner. Unfortunately, I am in the area that was affected by Hurricane Ike. We had to evacuate for the hurricane, then once we returned home we did not have electricity for 13 days. My job was also without electricity for most of that time as well. I have to say that even though I was affected, I am very blessed.....I have a job and home to go to every day. There were so many people in our area that lost everything they had including their home. I don't live in Galveston but very close to the area. The residents of Galveston are really having it rough. Most of them lost everything they had. It is amazing how the community steps up to help everyone in need. In times like this you learn that you do have neighbors that care.

On the financial side of things......September was extremely expensive. It cost so much to evacuate and once we returned home we had a generator that we had to fill with gasoline. I will be dealing with getting our finances caught up this next month. Due to the Hurricane I was not able to have the garage sale as planned. I will be working on getting ready to do that in the next couple of weeks.

I did make one positive decision in regards to our finances. I discontinued our pool service and decided to do it myself. We decided a few years back to hire a pool service because we could not get the chemicals regulated. The pool service straightened us out and we continued using them since they provided all the chemicals. The cost was $155.00 per month. I decided that I needed to quite being lazy and make my mind up that I can do this. And I can.....when we returned home after the hurricane our pool was green.......really, really green. But there was not much we could do until our power was restored. Once it was restored I was able to get it clean and sparkling. That is proof that I can do this......I think before I was just allowing myself to be lazy. No more lazy!!!

DLD