Financial Milestone: Fully Funded Emergency Fund

Woohoo! We completed our emergency savings fund!

Eric and I have been serious about our financial plan for three years (since we took Financial Peace University), and when we found out we were pregnant last July we knew we really wanted to have a fully funded emergency fund in place before adding another member to our family. At that point we didn't have any debt (except our house mortgages) and had been working toward completing our savings account for six months.

But we honestly weren't sure how possible it would be to finish before she was born. Based on our first calculations, we estimated April 2012 (a month after her due date).

Then we thought March might be possible. Tough, but possible.

So there's reason to celebrate.

Thanks to unexpected year-end bonuses from work, we were able to complete our emergency fund (Dave Ramsey's No. 3 baby step) on Jan. 30, 2012, exactly six weeks before our due date. (We thought the extra checks would allow us to complete it on Feb. 16, but we re-ran the calculations and realized we could complete it immediately! So we did! Yea!)

It feels so, so good to have the extra security.

I always thought we'd have to save money (like $100/paycheck) for the rest of our lives. So it's freeing to know that now we've got a fully funded emergency fund (with more than five months of expenses) that we hope to never touch, and we can instead focus on throwing our extra money at investing for retirement, saving for our child(ren)s' educations and paying off our house.

Oh, yeah, and diapers and child care. :)

Who knows. Maybe we'll buy bikes to celebrate.

Just kidding.

But we might buy this. (And we'll probably buy bikes if we sell our house!) We think it's important to reward ourselves!

How are your financial goals going?

P.S. If you've tried to download Your Family Playbook but noticed the Buy Now link wasn't working, it should be fixed now. Thanks to Susan for letting us know!