Dreaming

Dreaming…

With our unexpected refinance, comes a little unexpected money. Or at least that’s what we’ve been told. Due to the refinance, we should have one skipped mortgage payment. That means we have about a $3000 windfall coming our way, potentially.

$3000… what could we do with that money? Pay off debt. Go on a small family vacation. Buy a nice piece of jewelry. Use it towards Christmas. Honestly, the possibilities are endless. And I have been thinking about what we should do with that money.

First of all, we need to bump our emergency fund back up to $10,000. It has slowly been eroded away and right now only has about $7900. (With The Husband’s extra paycheck in November we are taking $1000 of that paycheck and putting it into savings, still leaving us about $1000 short of $10,000.) So, right off the bat, if we do get to skip one mortgage payment and have that extra money to spend, the first thing we will do is put $1000 in savings. This will bring our emergency fund up to *$10,000, which is where we like it to hover while we are paying off debt.

*Side note: $10,000 is not a 3 – 6 month emergency fund like all the experts say we should have. We just can’t afford that while we are getting out of debt. However, $10,000 will pay all of our bills for 2 months. Of course, we are talking bare bones expenses, but we could last 2 months with absolutely zero income on this emergency fund. $10,000 would also cover most other emergencies: new washing machine, new air conditioning unit, something for our pool, a medical emergency for one of The Kids. You get the point. It will be nice to have, what we consider, a fully funded mini-emergency fund again.

Assuming this all falls out the way we expect it to, that would leave us with $2000 to decided what to do with. After funding our emergency fund, the remainder of the money will most likely go towards our credit card debt. $2000 is a huge chunk of money and, coupled with our normal monthly payments, will make a bid difference on our credit card balance.

We are trying to build a financially stable house; like we’ve never had before. Getting out of debt is one major way to do that. But, so is having a financial safety net. We do not want to have to charge every little emergency that comes our way. Paying off debt and saving for an emergency are two ways we are actually helping ourselves.

At this point, it is just dreaming. We don’t have the money and don’t know for sure if we are going to get it. Our refinance closes at a weird time so we might actually be paying our mortgage every month with no “skipped” months. But, it’s fun to dream and fun to think about how we could use extra money.

Debt and savings, that’s how I want to spend any windfall we might get. Debt and savings. Pretty boring I know, but that is where our hearts are and where our goals are.