smiling and fussing
Tomorrow I smile.
Last August, I set aside $25 from the interest earned by my Emergency Fund so that I could start a home down payment fund in its own account. The growth of this new account was slow going, but I figured that if I was disciplined, just maybe I would be able to put together about ten thousand dollars by October 2008. I decided to be ambitious. I tacked another three thousand onto that goal, because I didn’t want to set the bar too low. Besides, after looking at the market, I figured that ten thousand wouldn’t be enough. I set up automatic deposits through payroll and looked forward to paying off credit card debt so that I could save more aggressively. Then I was laid off. Then I got a job. Long story short, blah blah blah, tomorrow I meet my thirteen thousand dollar savings goal. I will smile.
After tomorrow, I will fuss.
I will knit my brow and purse my lips as I make another estimate of how much money I’ll need for the house. As I’ve already discussed before, things have changed since I made my initial estimate. I already know I want to increase my emergency fund by about four thousand dollars. But I think, based on more intense scrutiny of home prices, local taxes and other various fees, that it would be an excellent idea to increase the amount of the down payment/closing costs fund. I am willing to use some of the emergency fund to help with the house, within reason and depending on the circumstances, but using the overwhelming majority of the emergency fund is completely out of consideration. I must save more. Thousands more. It is not fun to rain on your own parade, but that is the responsible thing to do. However, I am not going to ruin tomorrow. It is my day to celebrate meeting a lofty goal early.
I can fuss later.
