All right, so you've got one emergency.
All right, got it covered. 2:00 that becomes stressful 5
back-to-back and suddenly your nervous system is like, I'm out
of here. I'm not doing this.
So maybe it is a car repair, a medical bill, or maybe you've
had to miss work. One of your appliances decides,
OK, I'm done or you have what happens to us often your kiddo
gets sick and you just have to say, you know what, being a
parent raising kids in today's world is a different emotional
weight. But also if you have ADHD, then
you're also not only do all of those things cause some
additional stress, not just the financial part, but the
emotional side too. Because if we're managing ADHD
symptoms and also family life and work and all the things,
carrying families financial responsibilities on top of that
can be very taxing. So today we're going to be
talking about what happens if life likes you real hard and you
have to dip into your emergency fund numerous times throughout
the month. How do you rebuild after those
hits keep coming? How do you recover without
feeling shame? And why the perfect emergency
fund advice might not work for you and your family.
All right, welcome to today's episode, Debt Rebel.
I am so glad that you're here. And I want to say a special
hello and welcome to Carrie and Amanda.
Thank you for joining the Debt Rebel community and jumping on
my website and filling out some info so that you can get some
exclusive content. So, so glad that you're a part
of our community. So today we are talking about
when emergencies come up and it can feel super defeating, right
Then it's not just one thing. And they just keep coming.
So what's the point in saving if this if it just keeps
disappearing, right? So this is sometimes things that
we can hear when we're talking about finances and setting up
emergency funds because when our emergency funds are getting
drained that we can feel emotionally exhausted because we
struggle with discouragement, all or nothing thinking or maybe
we just avoid our finances after setbacks.
And you know what, those things are all normal things, and
especially with an ADHD brain, because our brains want to
protect us and from from anything that it perceives as a
threat. So but I want you to hear me say
using your emergency fund is absolutely not failure.
And you know what? That's literally its job.
That's its whole purpose for being.
So you didn't fail because your emergency fund got used.
You succeeded because debt wasn't your only option.
And that's what this show is all about is not creating additional
debt for you and getting out of debt because I have seen for
myself and my family, but also for my clients, the level of
relief and joy when you have less debt or no debt, how much
it contributes to your life positively.
Financial resilience is not about never getting hit.
It's being able to recover faster when it does because we
know life is going to happen. We are raising kids.
Kids can be expensive sometimes, but things can come up that we
just cannot predict. We know emergencies are going to
happen. We don't necessarily know when
they're going to happen. So first thing I want to talk
about is this whole perfect emergency fund thing.
Perfection is for me, it is I, I would say I used to be a
perfectionist and since I got diagnosed, it all makes sense
now why I had this all or nothing feeling or thinking that
it had to be perfect or what was the point of doing it at all.
And since I've had some training and some knowledge around that,
it's given me an opportunity to say, you know what?
There is no such thing as perfection.
It is such a, it is such a fib. It's such a lot.
It is not. It's not our thing.
That's what I think. I'd love to hear what you think.
But a lot of Internet advice or, you know, financial gurus will
say like we need to have three to six months savings.
And yes, that is absolutely a goal.
But you have to start somewhere, right?
Because when we don't start somewhere, we're never going to
be able to get ahead because we're constantly, it's like
swimming in quicksand. The families that I work with
are often rebuilding. Maybe we're trying to survive
inflation. Right now, as I'm recording this
episode, I am going to have to go fill.
I filled up my husband's truck and I'm about to fill up my car
and it's almost $6 a gallon for gas.
We're managing child care costs. We're navigating maybe
inconsistent income or you're healing from past financial
mistakes and getting control of those so that you can move
forward. So I want you to hear me say
that a partially funded emergency fund is still
protection. Whether you have $300 saved,
maybe that's to cover a deductible for something.
Maybe you have $1000 saved so that you don't have to put
something on a credit card when life happens, those small
cushions still reduce the panic and give you the ease that your
brain needs. So progress does not mean that
it is meaningless if it wasn't perfect.
All right, so, So what are some practical ways that you can
rebuild after some of these financial hits, right?
So something that, like I said before, start small, smaller
than your brain wants to. Maybe it's tiny automatic
transfers to that savings account for your that emergency
fund and it's focusing on momentum, not intensity.
But one thing that has helped for us is to keep certain
emergency categories separated. And so for instance, like cars,
that is something that we've we've talked about this a lot in
the membership lightly to car expenses are a thing that come
up. You cannot predict them.
You can still, you know, do your regular maintenance and a lot of
stuff, but things just happen. Cars breakdown whether they are
newer or they're super old in between cars breakdown, so
having some additional funds set aside for those car repairs is
important. Medical expenses.
Also having kids, sometimes you know what you have to go to the
emergency room and there's and there might be a co-pay involved
with that. Maybe you've got pets and
there's some additional expenses there, or maybe you've got some
irregular bills and we'll talk about that in a future episode.
But some of these things you might have to separate out from
your regular emergency fund. If you're in your debt
elimination journey and you're trying to pay off debt, but your
job, you need a car to you need a car for your to get to and
from work, or maybe your car is your work, then that you want to
to make sure you have an emergency fund set up for those
car repairs. Now, if you're like myself and
I'm remote, I got to make sure that my Internet is always paid.
So I might not have as big of a car car repair fund as someone
that uses our for transportation to and from work.
All right, so let's talk about how we can reduce decision
fatigue. So some of these things are to
automate our savings, simplify our budget categories and
creating these once a week money check insurance with ourselves,
build these recovery systems. So what?
So some questions that you can ask yourself when you're
rebuilding your emergency fund is what has helped us survive
this season, What has made things harder and what can we
simplify moving forward? So sometimes that is looking at
your your expenses and seeing, OK, you know what, there's
things in here that weren't helping us rebuild our emergency
fund right now. We can hold off on them.
Or maybe there are things that are like, you know what, this
was the thing that helped us get through this season, then we
absolutely needed it. Hold on to that.
Because when we look through those and we go through that
weekly money checking, we can stay on top of things and so
that we can rebuild those emergency funds faster than if
we were doing, you know, maybe once a month check insurance.
But what I want you to hear me say too is you don't need to
rebuild everything immediately, OK?
So sometimes, you know what it's going to happen that, you know,
you pull out of your emergency fund and maybe you're down $500.
It doesn't mean that it's a failure.
It is absolutely what it's there for.
So that you can, that's when you will pause your debt snowball
and go back to refilling that up until it's to that level,
whether it's $1000 for what you've already established is
best for you and your family because personal finance is just
that it's personal. So sometimes $1000, that's the
that's kind of the general rule. But depending on your situation,
good. You can evaluate that.
If you want to pick my brain and ask me that question personally,
I have some sessions available. They are free sessions.
They're quick 15 minute ones called Borrow my brain Sessions.
And I'm going to put that info in the show notes so that you
can ask me and we will brainstorm what works best for
you and your family as far as that emergency fund goes.
But I want you to hear me say you don't have to build
everything immediately. So even though you took that
money out, we're going to replenish it and we're going to
go back to survival mode and seeing where things are and what
you can free up, what needs to stay in your budget so that you
can rebuild that. Because those recovery systems
matter more than motivation. And creating that consistency
will beat this financial perfection every single time.
So when we have financial stress, it can look different
than a neurotypical person. So financial stress can impact
us neurodivergent people in a more intense way.
So our nervous system can get out of regulation, it can
challenge our relationships, maybe our parenting, our
decision making, because that stress is is creating those that
environment for ourselves. And so that's sometimes where is
shame and can enter that picture where it can cause us to hide or
maybe avoid the situation or we go to the opposite and we go
into these impulse controlling coping behaviors.
So that is just information, right?
So seeing how we might have handled emotional stress in the
past and reminding ourselves that we don't have to do that
that same way again, that we get to keep rebuilding and we can
keep planning and we can stop talking to ourselves like we're
the problem is that the situation we can respond instead
of react. And you are not, we're not
behind because life happened to you.
You just pause and then you it is adjusting the plan a little
bit differently. So stable finances are not built
by perfect people. They're built by people who are
willing to keep adjusting, learning, rebuilding and
growing. So that's who I love to work
with. If that's something that you're
like, hey, I, I probably should either up my emergency fund or
maybe I need to talk to someone about what my emergency fund
looks like. And if I have enough, maybe I
have too much and it's getting in the way of my getting rid of
my debt. Let's talk about it.
You can book one of those borrow my brain sessions.
We'll go over that kind of stuff.
And remember that emergency funds are meant to be used.
Those are your safety Nets because we don't want to put
life little setbacks on credit cards.
We want to create these ADHD friendly money management
systems that require realistic symptom realistic systems and
that financial recovery is not a linear process.
The challenge I have for you today is to rebuild one tiny
layer of safety this week. Whether you add $10 to your
emergency fund, maybe you review your reoccurring expenses and
see does something need to go so that you can move that money to
your savings account. Maybe you need to create one
sinking fund for those car repairs or if you haven't
scheduled your weekly money, check in with yourself.
Get that on your calendar. If you are stuck on something or
you want to brainstorm what your emergency fund should look like
for you and your family, jump on my website.
You can get the info on the show notes for the book my brain
session Debt rebelpodcast.com. All right, I will see you in the
next episode. Thanks for joining me.
Thank you for tuning into the Debt Rebel show today.
Ready to take your family budgeting to the next level?
Stop that paycheck to paycheck grind and start living debt
free. Head over to my website,
debtrebelpodcast.com that's DEBTREDEL podcast.com to grab
resources, tools and tips to make it happen.
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And remember your debt free life starts with one brave step and
I'm cheering you on every step of the way.
We'll talk soon. Debt Rebel.