Save up six months worth of living expenses

It’s a wonder what getting fed up with your old job and getting a new one that pays more will do for an emergency fund (and, um, sanity too)! I’ve got more than a month in there now and it’s growing at a happy, steady rate. I’m also going to put a big chunk of my tax refund into it, which will boost it even closer to my goal.

I finally got all of my credit card debt paid off and started building up ye olde emergency fund – and what happens but the Volvo decides to crap out a number of fronts (hi dead battery! hi stuck window! hi broken bushings!), thus eating into the poor emergency fund. I guess I should be glad I actually had an emergency fund to pay the repairs out of though, instead of putting it all on my credit card again.

Cars, I hate you more than love you.

The amount of money in my emergency fund isn’t even enough to cover one month’s HOA fees (nevermind the mortgage), which is kind of comical, but at the same time I guess I’m trying to pay down a few thousand dollars of debt and doing all right with that. At least I’m putting away a little money each month to get in the habit, like all of those financial advice sites say. Erp.