This step can be the one that people find difficult to keep their momentum up with. We’ve had all the awesome wins from paying off our debt in BS2 and now,
Baby Step 3 (BS3) is to save 3-6 months of expenses in EF to make it your Fully Funded EF (FFEF)
It can be hard to keep pushing yourself when you really feel like you deserve a break after all that hard work in Baby Step 2 but if you can just push through this step with as much energy as possible then you’ll be sitting a lot more comfortably from now on.
As we talked about in Baby Step 1 emergencies happen and they usually happen at the most inopportune time, your Fully Funded Emergency Fund (FFEF) is there to help you through the big emergencies, for example a job losses/redundancy, illness or any other big emergency that you can’t cover in your budget.
As this is originally an American plan it has a bigger role to play in the US as they have to pay for medical care so, where as a two week hospital stay for us wouldn’t be nice, it would be free but in America it could easily cost upwards of $10,000 (sadly a study in 2009 found that over two thirds of bankruptcies in America had a medical cause)
It’s important to remember that BS3 is 3-6 months of essential expenses, were not budgeting for takeaways and date nights in this one it’s just the bare bones of what it would cost you to survive 3-6 months if there was no income coming in.
Start your replacement car fund
There are no two ways about it – Cars can be a money suck. Luckily for those of us on the plan most car emergencies can be dealt with from the Baby Emergency Fund, but what if you don’t want to keep fixing the same problems and panicking before every MOT? Well, now’s a good time to start saving for a new car. This can either be a car to replace you’re current one when it finally gives up the ghost or if you decide you want a car upgrade (maybe your family has grown and you can’t squeeze all the kids in the back anymore or you’d just prefer to not be driving around in a rust bucket!).
Start furniture or other non-essential stuff replacement fund
I don’t know if you’re anything like us but in our house currently we have one double bed being held up by breeze block in the middle as that little support pole thingy broke when we moved house, sofas that have MDF under the seat cushions as someone (Dean) launches himself on them and has broken the springs or whatever it is that stops them from being all saggy and uncomfortable and a freezer with no drawer front as it broke off. These things don’t bother me too much at the moment as we are still in BS2 but when we get to BS3 I am going to implement a fund to save up to replace all of the broken furniture in the house.
Loving your breeze block fix! Its great that you haven’t gone out and got yourself into a whole load of debt just because something is slightly broken (bed, sofa). We bought 2nd hand sofas as our cats destroyed the only sofas we have ever bought brand new. Didn’t want to pay another £1500 for another set to be destroyed. £300 delivered = 2 leather (non-matching) sofas that are still going strong 4 years later.
I’m torn between maybe replacing them in the next year or two or waiting until after we have kids because I’m expecting them to get ruined (they are fabric and it’s like a fuzzy faux suede material which will probably soak up any baby related spills!) might just look at getting them refluffed and see how they go!
Love the line about cars being a money suck, as I think you’re totally right! Thanks for linking up to #MondayMoney. Hope to see you again next week.