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Emergencies are easier with money

Emergencies are easier with money


If you haven’t watched Big Mouth, do yourself a solid and get on it STAT!

We knew that our car needed a new battery. Mr. Tucker was told this in the fall when we had the winter tires put on. He had planned to do it at the end of January when we were due to get the oil changed (this is what they call “foreshadowing”). So neither of us were shocked when it hit -35c this past weekend and the battery died on the car. Of course, we figured this out when Mr. Tucker headed out to warm up the car before taking The Youngest to roller derby but at least it gave him enough time to call a cab and get her there.

As he sat in the gym with a lukewarm coffee and his kindle, I suggested that since he was in the south end anyway that he should just rent a car from the airport (pro tip: in general, airports always have the cheapest prices on rentals). So he did just that and then ran the errands he wanted to while he waited for derby to be finished.

Renting the car meant that we could get The Youngest to her snowboarding job the next morning as well as get The Eldest and I to our skiing (her volunteering and me participating) commitment on Sunday. Without even blinking, I just thought, “throw money at the problem.”

You know what’s nice? Being able to throw money at the problem. I remember that there was a time in my life where a dead battery would have been devastating for me. Not only could I not afford to rent a car but I also probably would have not had the money to spend on fixing the battery. I would have just thrown it on credit and paid a premium to do so. Instead, we dropped The Eldest and her friend off on Monday morning at school (it’s exams this week), jumped the car with our rechargeable car battery jumper (everyone should have one of these), brought the car in, and then Mr. Tucker and I hit a diner for a hot breakfast date. As luck would have it, the car was done within the hour and so we nabbed it and dropped the rental off, swinging by on our way back to The Eldest’s school as she was finished writing her exam. It was all serendipitous timing and we were home by noon.

I am just so grateful that we are in a place in our lives where we don’t even have to think twice about spending money to make our lives easier. It’s so freeing to not have to live on the edge and worry about how you are going to get everyone to the places they need to be. I just wanted to take a hot minute and be thankful for this and I never want to not be grateful that we’re in this place in our lives.

Going sideways

Going sideways

Sometimes Mr. Tucker has a frustrating work week and that always makes me run* to my spreadsheet. I like to double-check that the numbers are still on track. We are so lucky to have a permanent form of income right now that could carry the house should he lose his job. It’s better he doesn’t lose it – and it’s not in danger of being lost – but we could manage.

The one thing it can’t do though is cover the condo expenses (at least not without significantly reducing our lifestyle). We have been ->this close<- to getting everything done in there for weeks now but every time Mr. Tucker makes a plan to go and finish off some of the details, he gets derailed. Sure, it’s been a never-ending deluge of work incidents but it’s also been random, uncontrollable stuff, which makes it worse! For example, he got caught up in a protest downtown for so long that he ran out of time and then had to double back to pick up a kid in time. It feels sometimes like all forces are against us.

But the good news is that the Bank of Canada hasn’t raised the rate and people smarter than me suspect they will start lowering in a cycle or two. That may help the housing market a bit.

The worst part is that our chequing account is lower than it’s ever been. I can’t believe that at one point in my life it was normal to have under $5 in a chequing account because today if it dips under $1500 I panic. In all fairness, everything will get paid, and things are fine but it’s amazing what you get used to.

It’s been such a heck of a time for bleeding money – and right before the holiday season**, too! Part of the reason why it has dipped so low is that we had to buy all new appliances for the condo and since we abhor carrying debt, it got paid as soon as the credit card balance was due. We anticipated that expense but then came a series of unexpected expenses:

    • Mr. Tucker’s glasses broke, so that was an eye exam and some new glasses (thank you benefits for paying a lot of that!).
    • Our car randomly died downtown so Mr. Tucker had to have it towed to the dealership. They couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t start but still charged us a couple of hundred to look at it (but hey, free car wash***?)! There were three Lyfts on top of that to get back and forth. We got a battery jumper kit for the car in case it happened again because even with the free tow, we still need the car to go vroom.
    • We went to the dentist this week and learned that Mr. Tucker’s benefits have run out, so that is more out-of-pocket money we hadn’t anticipated (and I can only snail mail his portion to my benefit company like it is the freaking 90s).
    • Then, the piece de resistance: yesterday we had our first major snowfall…and the snowblower stopped working. We have given in for this year and just paid for a snow removal service. In all honesty, the snowblower came with the house and was probably old when we moved in. We’ve lived here for 6 years now so it was probably time. We will look into fixing it when we have less on our plates****.

Everything is just so incredibly frustrating right now for sure. But the one thing I am glad of is that we have the money to cover the above expenses because we keep money aside just for situations like these. Every month I slide some cash away into accounts labeled: car, health, and house expenses. It hurts me to actually use the money in there but I am glad it is there for us to not have to panic about unexpected expenses. I use the word “unanticipated” loosely because most of us should know that random expenses will pop up when we least expect them to.

So I am grateful for past me for looking out for today me but man, it’s only the first full week in December and I am still staring down a bunch of social events this month (it’s also my birthday a week before Christmas). While they aren’t all events that will cost money, some are and I am ok with that. Because instead of griping about the cost, I am grateful that I have friends I can spend time with and that I have access to a variety of different places where I can be social.

On that note, I recently finished The Good Life and I highly recommend it! It isn’t heavy with data but more about the stories of people who have happy lives vs. people who have unhappy lives. I’ll give you the crux of it: having high quality, close, positive relationships throughout your life is the key.


* LOL metaphorically. I can’t run.
** I save for that all year round so it doesn’t really affect me but I have upped our budget because the social aspect of this time of year has become more expensive but I would rather keep those events in our lives especially post-pandemic.
*** I’ll let you decide if $237 is a fair price for a car wash (spoiler: nope).
**** No, we are not going to shovel it ourselves. The last thing we need is the only able-bodied adult to have a massive coronary.