Are You Ready for an Emergency

Now more than ever, you need to be prepared for what life can throw at you.

Jacob K Thomas
5 min readMay 17, 2022

--

Photo by Oleg Magni from Pexels

How much do you think about your future? You do think about the future right? You just don’t think about what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week. You should be thinking about your future five, ten, or more years down the road.

Let me ask you something else. What is your plan for when something wrong happens? You don’t have one? If after the last two years we still haven’t learned that it is important to plan for our future in terms of emergencies, then I’m not sure what to tell you.

There are a lot of ways to be prepared for future emergencies. The best plan is to have money set aside, ready to go to work, if you need it. You mean you don’t have an emergency fund. Oh, right, you live paycheck to paycheck. Yes, I completely understand. I used to be in the same boat.

I had no emergency fund. My emergency fund was my credit cards. That’s not a real emergency fund by the way. It’s the worst thing you can do to yourself.

OK, so no emergency fund, what about life insurance if something happens to you. You mean your job doesn’t have anything like that available for you? Got it, well, have you thought about getting a policy for yourself. Oh wait, you are living paycheck to paycheck.

I won’t even go and mention that $500 emergency that so many people talk about. I already know the answer to that one.

From this short check, it’s obvious, that you aren’t ready for anything. If you aren’t ready, that probably means your partner, loved ones, or anyone in your circle isn’t going to be ready if something happens to you.

I understand we are living in very difficult times. The cost of things is high right now. You are probably worried about your job. Some other random issues are going on. I mean life just happens.

With all of that, you need to stop and realize, it’s time to organize yourself and get a plan going. Start with an emergency fund. If you have no idea what an emergency fund is, it’s simple. That is the money that should only be used when you have no other income available to you. If you are living paycheck to paycheck, you are thinking it’s not…

--

--

Jacob K Thomas

Writer. Cook. Traveler. Photographer. Featured on the Food Network and newspapers around America. https://jacobkthomas.com/