I was just about to write another "Murphy visits Grace" post when it struck me that I write these kind of posts all the time. I took a brief ramble through my 2008 posts, and, sure enough, every single month I was hit with some unexpected expense. Sometimes it was the car; sometimes it was one of my kids; more than once it was a medical or dental expense; and don't get me started on appliance breakdowns.
But I am finally starting to realize that I have to stop blaming Murphy and start budgeting for real life. Real life, at least in Grace's world, includes at least one monthly unbudgeted expense. Over the course of 2008, this averaged out to an additional $260 a month.
For March, 2009, it will be an unexpected $533 insurance expense.
Yep! More fallout from my garage fire.
My broker had already warned me that when my homeowner's insurance was canceled, it would cost more. She thought she had placed it with a company that charged me almost double my previous payment. Yesterday, it turned out that a computer had accepted my application, but the human adjuster had not. Never mind that I already have my rental house covered by the same company--they do NOT want my business on my residence. My broker finally did get me placed, but now the price has tripled. Hence the check for an additional $533.
Arrgh!
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5 comments:
I call it the expected unexpected. You don't know what will go wrong, but you do know that something will! They used to bust my budget month after month until I built up a buffer fund and savings. I hope you get at least a month or two of relief.
Wow, that's a crazy increase! Maybe it would have been better to not even claim the fire. Who knew?
Unfortunately, at $10,000+ to rebuild the garage, and $9,000 for the contents, there is no way I could have forgone making a claim.
Aw, that really sucks!!! I can't believe insurance companies can get away with that stuff, but I guess they can :-(
As far as the title of your post, well, I was just thinking about that yesterday....I've got money put aside for the roof now, and now it looks like the fireplace is going to need work. I was thinking, "I'm never going to get ahead until I can have a couple of months where nothing like this happens!" Uhm. Right, Carol.
I'm not sure how to budget for the unexpected, because there really isn't any wiggle room in my budget--even the $4 hot dog cooker took money away from the other bills--I haven't decided how I'm going to fix the little dent yet, but sometimes I just do stuff like that, even though I know it's only hurting me in the long run....well, anyhow, I know what you mean, and it sounds like now that you've figured out the problem, you can come up with a way to handle it!
Ouch. It almost happened to us but we were lucky with our first water damage claim. Our second claim went on our condo master insurance policy so we got off scott free.
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