I enjoyed this article, but agree with LurkerCarl that what was described wasn’t really change in the way that an emergency fund is required. I think Trent’s life pretty much sums up anyone in the 18-30 age group. In the year that my husband and I married, we also moved house, had our first child and both changed jobs.

SP – couldn’t agree more about expectations based on your environment. I went to university; both my children are not even ten years old and assume they will go to university. Disaster aside, they will be going.

Henry, I sincerely hope you did not talk to that lovely woman in the store who bought ‘your cheese’. That would be a horrible and inappropriate thing to do, delivered in a very threatening manner based on what you wrote. If I were her, I would have thrown your ‘how dare you’ right back at ya.

10 years ago, my wife and I got married. We couldn’t imagine having kids. So we took steps to prevent it from happening. 10 years later, just as planned, we still don’t have kids.

A little careful planning can drastically reduce so many of those unexpected “suprises.” Sure, we don’t have the exciting stories that some of our more carefree peers may have, but what we do have is stability a rock-solid financial situation. We didn’t decide to quit our jobs and spend a year traveling on a whim. We didn’t allow ourselves to carelessly become pregnant. We didn’t delude ourselves into thinking the solution to a layoff is more student loans and more time out of the workforce (by going back to school). We got down to the boring business of getting back to work and staying focused on our long-term goals. Consequently, everything is going according to plan.

Be prepared for the unexpected, but have a plan. Personally, I’d be a little worried about someone having 3 children when just a few years ago, they “couldn’t imagine” being a parent. I’d like to think that they spent at least a LITTLE time thinking about parenthood before they just dove in and created 3 more dependents.

I wouldn’t mind seeing you barred from this site, either. You are either a troll, or the kind of person that most of us would prefer to never encounter: a criminal.

God bless you!

hotmar (from Brazil)

Thank you sir.

Henry, you remind us all that the world has many kinds of people in it. We need these reminders, whether or not we wish to share our space with all these different folks.

You crack me up. I never know whether to say good for you or shame on you.

From year 15 to year 5, the life Trent describes was one without long term goals. Nothing unexpected happened there. Hopefully, Trent will not have to experience catastrophies, only blessings.

Leah, get any job you can for right now. Don’t tap into the emergency fund until you need to. Since rent free is a temporary situation, you’ll need that emergency fund to put food on the table and keep shelter over your head if you remain unemployeed. Continue to actively seek employment in your field of expertise while you work at the other job.

I later moved it to a high interest checking account where it is fully accessible, but is gaining some sort of interest.

You were standing at the counter and said clearly “I only wanted what I ordered”. Of course the woman thought you didn’t want that cheese! Your strategy required that you lie (since you did want the extra cheese), and unfortunately there were consequences to that.

The deli in question did give you the extra previously as a gesture of goodwill, but that doesn’t obligate them to give you more free stuff whenever you like. You were lucky enough to get free stuff the first few times, it just didn’t work today.

(apologies to Trent for side-tracking the discussion)