When Life Happens

The county in which I live requires most houses to have a sewage grinder.  This is just what it sounds like.  It is a large pump that sits near your house, grinds up your waste, and pumps it out to the county pipe.  The reason for this is because most homes in my area are quite a distance from the road, often downhill, making waste flow a little more difficult.

Recently, our sewage grinder broke.  To make make matters worse, it broke because it wasn't the right size grinder or waste basin.  The entire unit would need to be replaced.  Life happened.

Praise God, I am married to a very handy man who could do the entire installation of the new basin and grinder himself while my father helped with the electrical end, but the cost of the new parts totaled slightly over $3,000.  It doesn't matter if you are living comfortably or struggling, $3,000 definitely makes a financial dent.

In my experience, finances are cyclical.  We all have ups and we all have downs.  We all have times when we are crunching numbers and getting by on mending clothes and we all have times when things are a little less stressful and we can splurge on a cute pair of shoes.  But when the most unexpected happens, we have to take a moment and closely assess our finances, account for every penny, and practice delayed gratification (I promise, you can have your Grande Mocha Frappuccino in a few months).

The key to getting your frappuccino sooner rather than later is to live now like the unexpected all ready happened.  Our finances probably will not change much with this $3,000 hit because we have been living frugal and passing on unnecessary purchases regularly.  If you wait for the unexpected expense to occur to begin changing your spending habits, you may not recover very quickly, if at all.

So I encourage each of you to live day to day like the unexpected may happen.  Consider each purchase carefully and shun frivolousness.  The occasional splurge can keep us sane, but make sure "occasional" truly is occasional.  If you try to trick yourself, only you will lose in the end.

Sit down tonight, open your Quicken software or Excel spreadsheets and start accounting for each penny.  You may be surprised at what you discover about your spending habits.  Don't give life the opportunity to throw you something you can't handle.