Dealing with unexpected expenses

Because even the most well-crafted budget can’t anticipate it all

Photo by Alexey Taktarov on Unsplash

My husband recently surprised me with a bit of financial news. His mother’s upcoming surgery and hospital stay? About half of the bill will fall to us. And by extension, we’re also going to be expected to pay for other major medical expenses as they come up over the years. And since she’s 74 years old, that’s likely to be happening more and more often.

My husband’s family is Korean, and this is simply part of the culture. I don’t come from the same cultural background, but as someone who values family and respects my husband’s culture, I’m of course totally on board.

But it does throw a monkey wrench into the budget I have been carefully crafting for our family.

So as someone who writes on personal finance topics, I thought I would use this opportunity to walk through ways to deal with unexpected expenses–whether they are sudden events like a car accident or job loss, or things you simply didn’t know about or forgot to budget for.

Take time to process the new reality

Before you start crunching numbers to deal with the financial side of things, be sure to give yourself enough time to deal with the actual situation. That’s going to…