Bearing witness to Emergency Funds

[MonkeyMama]

That is great news - fast recoveries make these things easier. Reminds me, we often don't see hospital bills for months or years. So maybe she will be back at work before you even get any big bills?

[graceful]

Sorry to read about your wife's problem. Glad the surgery went well. Hope she recovers and feels better 100% quickly.

[Cyrus1]

Nice discussion, i hope i will do this too same, thanks for sharing this idea
with us....

[nick__45]

Just to update....

According to the surgeon, my wife's procedure went "very well". She is down to one pain pill a day from one every six hours for the last 3 weeks (pre and post surgery). An hour after the surgery, when she woke up the arm that had been affected (all strength basically gone), had it's strength back.

The recovery is very tedious, no lifting, twisting, etc. It just takes a lot of discipline but she's been doing well for about a week with one more week to go before our follow up. Hopefully we get cleared.

Now I'm just praying that the recovery goes well and that long-term she is well and pain free.

Financially, it's probably gone as well as I could have hoped. Aside from our medical costs (co-pays, prescriptions, ancillary stuff), which haven't been high, we haven't really spent any money. To me, it's quite shocking how little you can live on when you go into a very conservative (read: conserve funds/resources) mindset. Hopefully, it's one of the things that can carry over when we're past this phase.

Yeah, we're still waiting for the big bill from the hospital, surgeon, and various specialists but I think it will be manageable.

I have almost always live in a conservative mindset because I was born and grew up dirt-poor. I make very good money now but that hasn't changed my spending habit. I do have 1 bad habit or eating out with close co-workers and I treat them for their help. It does cost dearly but in my situation, it pays to be nice to certain people and show them you appreciate their hard work.

Congratulation on the good news. **** happens to people and you planned and executed well. That separate real champs from chumps. Thanks for sharing.

[elessar78]

I have almost always live in a conservative mindset because I was born and grew up dirt-poor. I make very good money now but that hasn't changed my spending habit. I do have 1 bad habit or eating out with close co-workers and I treat them for their help. It does cost dearly but in my situation, it pays to be nice to certain people and show them you appreciate their hard work.

Congratulation on the good news. **** happens to people and you planned and executed well. That separate real champs from chumps. Thanks for sharing.

No prob. I think we always talk about these things in the abstract, because emergencies really do rarely pop up. But invariably they will, it's just a matter of magnitude.

I think an additional lesson I take away from this is to REALLY beef up my emergency fund.

The building back up of the EF hopefully happens quickly as we have been planning to be out of debt for about two years now (pleasant set backs... like a new baby).