Canadian Finance Blog

Posted: 24 Aug 2011 02:00 AM PDT

Sometimes no matter what you do, you end up taking a big financial hit. My wife and I are (still) in the middle of moving. We ended up putting a bunch of our things in storage, traveling for a few weeks, and then headed to the city we knew we would end up in. We didn’t know where we were going to end up living, but we had a place to stay for a week, so we figured we would sort out those little details when we got there. Luckily, it only took a few hours after we arrived to find a place we liked and could afford, so we took it!

Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to move in right away, as the place had been vacant for quite some time and needed a bit of cleaning up and fixing before we could move in. Also, unfortunately, we only had a place to stay for a week, and after that we were on our own. Luckily, the stars aligned and the night we wouldn’t have a place to stay anymore, we could move into our new place! Hurray! Except – all of our stuff is still in a storage locker, some 100+km away, and because I have been working full time since we got here, we can’t go and get it until the next weekend. Cue 1 more week of living out of what can fit in our car. Yikes.

So even though we were diligent, and dragged half of our old fridge’s condiments around with us for 4+ weeks, and even though we were smart, and kept a lot of our pantry/dry goods in a box in our storage room, we suddenly have to clean a house, get enough furniture and dishes to make it livable, and enough food to feed us for a week. For one, it is hard to clean a house if you don’t have any cleaning supplies (ours are all in storage!). So we borrowed what we could, and bought the rest. For another, it is hard to eat breakfast, make lunch, and cook dinner when all your dishes, and cutlery, and glasses, and food are all locked away in a box. So two plates, bowls, knifes, forks and spoons from the thrift store later, a borrowed pan and pot, and one trip to Costco solved that problem. We need something to sleep on. Do we buy the air bed, or do we scavenge the mattress from an old futon? Well, let’s just say I hope it doesn’t have bedbugs.

Even though we are doing our best to keep costs down as low as possible, we’ve already spent $300+ in the last few days just trying to get our place liveable until we can go and get the rest of our things. Even when we do get our things, getting what we need to keep our place in order will cost a few hundred more. It’s frustrating to encounter such expenses when you are not expecting them, and it sucks to take such a big financial hit. However, we took a few steps ahead of time that helped manage the cost, and we did a few things to keep the damage low. Here’s what we did.

Ahead of Time

As always, make sure you are constantly investing into your emergency fund. We’ve decided to dip into ours in this situation, just because we would rather spend a bit of our emergency fund rather than go into credit card debt. If we have the money, we might as well spend it and hope that we don’t run across other, more important emergencies.

Secondly, plan for the unexpected. In our case, we had planned our trip not thinking that we would go camping, but we packed our camping supplies “just in case”. Well, this is the “just in case” that showed up. We may be using our sleeping bags and portable barbeque a lot over the next few days, and the only reason we can is that we considered we just might end up having to. Have a backup plan in mind so that you are not caught completely unaware or unprepared.

In The Moment

If you find yourself faced with the choice of taking a financial hit or asking for help – ask for help. We’ve been lucky enough to have some close friends nearby that have let us housesit for them. We’ve also been able to borrow cleaning supplies, laundry soap, towels and tools when we needed them. If we didn’t have friends, and if we didn’t ask for help, we would be out a lot more money than we currently are. Mitigate your losses by leaning on your friends and family in tough situations.

If you have the choice when you are faced with a necessary but unexpected expense, it is probably in your best interest to go with the cheaper option. We had to purchase a shopvac to deal with some of the mess that was left in our house, and while we could have gone for the “value” option that was the best quality for the dollar, we instead just went with the cheapest. It may not have the best features or the longest lasting warranty, but seeing as we don’t necessarily need those things right this minute, we saved a few dollars by going with the cheaper option that works just as well. By the way, if you ever have to vacuum up 40-50+ spiders and their 10 month old webs, buy a shopvac. They are worth their weight in gold.

What do you do to prevent yourself from taking a financial hit?

Taking a Financial Hit originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on August 24, 2011.