More Details: How I Spent My Emergency Fund

My last post focused on how my first months of residency have been financially. I included in that post that I ran out of money 3 months after residency despite having what I assumed was a healthy emergency fund saved up. After the post I received some emails asking how that could be since I previously mentioned that I had almost 6 months of funds saved up based on my assumptions of spending patterns. This post will get a little more into the details as to how my e fund evaporated in half the time I thought it would.


Turns out that the assumption of how much I would spend moving from Houston to Austin was way off! The first reason for this was that I started spending 2X what I budgeted for rent. This was mostly because initially I was going to have a short term lease with my friend who was giving me a heck of a deal to rent a bedroom in a condo he was buying. However, the condo closed about 6 months later than anticipated which left me with no place to live just days before starting my new job, described here in this previous post. It was either rent a hotel room till I find an affordable apartment or go with a short term lease near where I was working. Spending twice what I wanted to on housing really ate up my emergency fund much faster than I anticipated.

 

Illness in the family

My fiancee had a death in the family and as a result we bought $1000 worth of airline flights to make it to the funeral. Turns out bereavement discount is at most 10% of the ticket price and really offered little to no help in the difficult situation. This was another huge unexpected hit to the emergency fund that was not anticipated but money well spent.

 

Deposits for new places

$600 deposit for my rental, $200 for electric both quickly also took a bite out of my e-fund that was unexpected. I didn’t budget these before moving to Austin since I was going to be living with my friend who already had energy in his name and was not charging me a deposit to live with him. As above, when that deal fell through I quickly had to start spending money on deposits that I did not anticipate.

 

Storage unit

Because I could not move in with my friend and had to get a smaller apartment I was forced to get a storage unit till I can move into a bigger place. $144 a month increased cost initially not budgeted.

storage unit

Vet Bills

My dog duke became sick and needed to go to the vet which was $150 in bills including medicine. Another one time expense that along with the others started to add up.

duke

 

 

 

 

Having a roommate can definitely help save thousands of dollars a year and would have helped stretch my dollar even longer. When my fiancee is able to move here in December 2016 that will definitely help decrease some of the costs and allow us to both aggressively attack our debt. Until then, I’ll just enjoy my apartment and life as is since there is no point getting upset over spending more money than I expected for such a short period of time. After all, this living situation was meant to be temporary.

 

3 thoughts on “More Details: How I Spent My Emergency Fund

  • October 4, 2016 at 11:58 AM
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    How soon before you can replenish the emergency fund or do you feel comfortable for now not having one? It’s always shocking how moving ends up costing so much. I suppose not always but most of us docs who have moved a lot know that it doesn’t take much for the move to set us back $5k in just a few days.

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    • October 11, 2016 at 1:27 PM
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      I should be able to have a 6 month emergency fund built up by the mid/end of December while paying off all the credit card bills plus the small loan my family gave me. I definitely do not feel comfortable not having one but now that I have received my first paycheck this past Friday I know its only a matter of time before I can build it up. Moving can be very expensive and the costs quickly add up!

      Reply
  • October 4, 2016 at 2:36 PM
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    What a series of unfortunate events, sorry to hear. Hopefully that new attending salary should start kicking in and you’ll be able to build up that emergency fund back up in no time.

    Reply

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