The Refrigerator Incident

by Chad Miller /// October 10th, 2007

This weekend was one of those wonderful, extended weekends where everyone has Monday off.

My wife and I therefore decided to host a cookout Monday here at our new home. Folks started showing up at about 2 in the afternoon, and stayed until about 2 in the morning. A wonderful day!

When mealtime came, everyone was of course most helpful in the kitchen. I’ve been a stage manager for about six years, so when it comes to big group projects like that, I’m generally the take-charge type, giving everyone assignments and making sure everyone has what they need.

Naturally, everyone was in and out of the refrigerator all day and all night…I’d estimate the door was opened no less than 150 times Monday. I understand that there is no actual mechanical connection between the door of a refrigerator and the guts that actually make it run, but I believe all that action broke our refrigerator’s poor little cold heart.

Death In The Family

Throughout the evening, people kept checking the freezer for ice, but it seemed like the water in the ice trays just didn’t want to freeze!

The next morning, as I was working (in my home office) my wife came in to let me know that nothing in our refrigerator is cold. The fridge was dead. We had figured that this refrigerator was on its last legs, so we’d been planning to replace it, but we were hoping to wait at least until the New Year. Alas.

I had an old mini-fridge from college out in the garage, so I hauled it into the kitchen and plugged it in and we loaded everything that could fit into it.

So I called into work and told them I was taking the day off, then we went shopping for refrigerators and bought a nice one, one of those side-by-side models with a water filter and a spout in the door.

Replacement

Unfortunately, this came at a pretty bad time as far as buying a replacement goes. I’ve just started paying tuition, and while we can afford it, we don’t have a lot of surplus after that and living expenses.

If you’ve ever heard of Dave Ramsey, you’ll know he gives great amounts of applied common sense in the form of financial advice to his audience via books, seminars, and his radio show. In regards to taking control of your finances, you’ll know the first thing he advises his audience do is to set aside $1000 in an (easily accessible) emergency fund in the bank. After then becoming debt-free, you are to add to it until your emergency fund can cover three to six months of living expenses.

I am in the middle of this third step, building the emergency fund from the original $1000 seed up to the 3-6 month expense coverage. As this was an emergency, I withdrew from the emergency fund to buy the new fridge. Across the next couple paychecks I get, I’ll put the same amount back into the emergency fund.

You have no idea how nice it is to be able to handle a moderately significant financial ‘crisis’ like this without breaking a sweat. We’re not financially hurting, and we don’t have to live on rice and beans for the next three months because of this. We didn’t have to put it on a credit card and pay it back at 29% interest or whatever the going scam is these days. That feeling is awesome.

A Word of Advice: If you don’t have an emergency fund like this, start one. You have no idea how good it will make you feel to have it when you need it. And believe me (and anyone else with sense), sooner or later, you will need it.

Also, if you don’t know Dave Ramsey or his financial advice, I can’t recommend his book Financial Peace enough. Buy it, borrow it, check it out from the library, or swipe a friend’s copy, but read it.