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It can happen in an instant.
The washing machine quits working. Pipes freeze. A flood, fire or refrigerator that quits working just hours after you return from the grocery store with a week’s worth of meat, milk, fruit and vegetables.
Household emergencies never give you advance notice. They just appear out of nowhere to send you into a tailspin. They’re always an inconvenience, never expected and almost always designed to break your budget.
Thankfully, there are ways for you to get the money you need to fix the problem–especially at the Personal Money Store.
Preparing for the Unexpected
In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to worry about household emergencies. In a perfect world, cars breaking down, water heaters that break and baseballs thrown through windows wouldn’t be a big deal.
You’d have enough money in the bank to hire someone to fix the problem.
But this isn’t a perfect world. This is a world where people work too hard and everything costs entirely too much. It’s a world were most people don’t make enough money to cover unexpected expenses, much less household emergencies.
In fact, Fortune reports that 63 percent of all Americans don’t have enough money to cover a $500 car repair, a $1,000 doctor’s bill or an emergency that is much, much more serious.
So you’re not alone.
You and pretty much everyone else works hard, pays bills and hopes that nothing goes seriously wrong. Because if a household emergency pops up, you just might find yourself choosing between groceries, hot water and trying to figure out how you’re going to get the kids to school in the morning.
Expecting the Unexpected
If you pay attention to the news, you would likely believe that everyone in the United States is living large. The stock market is hitting all-time highs, businesses are doling out bonuses and there are more millionaires than ever.
So why aren’t the average people doing better?
Yes, the American Dream is still alive and well–but not for everyone.
These days, most Americans are barely making enough money to pay their everyday living expenses. Rent, gas, food and clothing are enough to drain a family’s checking account.
And then you add in extra expenses such as youth athletics, field trips, birthday parties and the occasional night out and it’s enough to bleed a bank account dry.
And then the household emergency hits.
When something bad and unexpected happens–and it always happens–it can quickly wipe out a family’s savings account (if they are lucky enough to have one) and throw you into an immediate crisis.
Now, the big-time government experts will tell you that you should expect the unexpected. You should sock away 10 percent of your earnings in order to pay for a household emergency.
But that’s not practical–especially when you’re barely making enough money to make ends meet in the first place.
Options and Opportunities
So how do prepare for a household emergency–and respond when one strikes?
Here is a list of things you can do to prepare for and respond to a household emergency:
An emergency can happen in an instant. Make sure you are prepared–or at the very least know how to get help when it happens.
The authors featured on this site are not financial experts, but are instead normal folks just figuring out how to make ends meet. The opinions and advice featured on See Debt Run have worked well for our families, but may not work for yours. If you choose to incorporate any ideas included on this site into your own financial planning, you do so at your own risk. We do NOT take any responsibility for the decisions you may make, even if they were based on something you read on this site.
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