The $500 Emergency That Nearly Broke Us

Back when we were becoming debt-free, my husband and I were working super hard to become financially stable. My husband was working the graveyard shift out of town, and I was at home with our two boys, who were both under two years old. Oh, and I was hugely pregnant with our third child. Even though we were slowly making progress on our debt-free goal, it still felt like an uphill climb. We were side hustling like crazy. Pinching pennies. You name it, we were doing it to try to achieve our goal.

At the time, we had just a Starter Emergency Fund of $3,000. We didn’t yet have a fully funded Emergency Fund, but we were steadily making progress on our goals. That is, until everything nearly got derailed. I had just checked our budget to confirm how much I could spend on groceries that week. At that time, we were utilizing primarily the cash envelope system. However, I was super tired (hello, being pregnant while chasing toddlers), and I just honestly couldn’t. I didn’t want to have to stop at the bank to get the cash out before heading to the store. So I checked the bank account and budget, confirmed my number and then I went shopping.

Negative $500

Our grocery budget was $100. That was it. And my total was $97.23 – and yes, even after all these years, I still remember the total because of what happened. I swiped my debit card only for it to be declined. I tried again. Declined again. I knew we had money in the account because I had just checked it before I left the house. What in the world was going on? This was before we had a hundred million apps on our phones, so I didn’t have a banking app yet on my phone to check while I was standing there. I ended up having to leave my groceries behind and load up my kids and head home.

That’s when I saw that we were negative $500 in our checking account! How in less than an hour had our account been drained? Digging deeper I discovered mulipitle $40 charges from a doctor my husband had used just over a year ago. To my knowledge my husband had not even seen this doctor so why were we being charged.

What Happened

Even though I hated to do it, I had to blow up my husband’s phone like a crazy woman to wake him up. I asked him about the charges, and he had no idea what I was talking about because he had not seen that doctor in over a year. The mystery keeps going. Why were we being charged for services we had not even used? Not to mention, we had a few bills that I had already submitted payments for, but had not cleared the account yet. My anxiety and stress were super high.

When I contacted the doctor’s office eventually we were abel to find out that they had put my husband card information in another patients file. That patient had not been paying for their services and so they decided to just bill the card on file. Which of course turned out to be my husband’s card. I won’t go into all the drama becasue it was extrmemly difficult to get our money back from them but we eventually did thank the Good Lord.

Lesson Learned

The reality is that an emergency fund is your lifeline when life decides to throw you a curveball. We could not have ever anticipated a doctor’s office charging us for services not rendered to one of us. But it happened. And we ended up with a negative balance in our bank account. It was scary. Ultimately, we had that emergency fund, which was small but mighty. I was able to transfer the money from the Emergency Fund to cover the loss while we waited to get our money back. The reality is we cannot predict every emergency that will happen. But we can prepare for life by having even a modest Emergency Fund. A Starter Emergency Fund doesn’t solve everything, but it buys you time and peace. And that’s powerful.

Build your emergency fund before life gives you a reason to need it.

If you don’t yet have a Starter Emergency Fund, take this as your sign to start now. Set a goal of $500 or $1,000. No, this won’t be a full Starter Emergency Fund (one month’s worth of living expenses saved), but it will get you moving in the right direction. Go ahead and set a weekly transfer so you can achieve your goal. Be willing to temporarily let go of something – pause a subscription service, stop going out to eat, stay off Amazon – whatever you’ve gotta do so you can quickly achieve your goal. You can do it. It’s not forever. And you’ll have way less anxiety with a little bit saved. But remember, once you achieve your initial goal of saving $500 or $1,000, increase that goal until you get to your specific Starter Emergency Fund number.