I am recovering from the blown budget blues. Have you ever been in the situation where you were doing everything right to stay within budget and then something unexpected happens? Then did it send your spending over the cliff? Well that is what has happened to me last week. Sadly it will continue into an unknown number of months going forward.

This is all related to our old family pet having heart issues. It’s not just the cost of the emergency visit and follow-up appointment with an animal cardiologist. But also the cost of the monthly medication prescribed. He is on some costly medication to add as much quality of life for our old dog for however long he has left. I wrote about this in my last post, Pet Care and Budget Collision.

We actually did a great job staying on budget through the holiday season. I was feeling pretty good about meeting our goals and our financial accomplishments. But then life seems to always enjoy throwing a few punches and slaps at us.

I knew deep inside that one day there will be some old age related costs for our little buddy. Fortunately I do maintain an emergency fund to handle things like this. But after surviving the gut-punch of knowing our dog is dying. I took a second blow when the costs starting sinking-in, causing me to sing the blown budget blues.

When it comes to Life, stuff will happen to cause a busted budget. Here is how I am recovering from the blown budget blues. Hopefully this will provide some tips for when you get hit with the unexpected budget buster.

My Steps to Recovering from the Blown Budget Blues

Get a Grip

Enough already with the bummer outlook. I took some financial hits and it’s time to slap myself straight. This is exactly what my emergency fund is for. To handle things like the $928 in Veterinary bills if and when they happen. We used our rewards credit card from our bank so I haven’t actually paid it yet. When it does come due mid-month I will just have to transfer the money from the emergency fund.

It is always a mental struggle for me after years and years of saving money to actually tap into it for stuff it was saved for in the first place. I do think it is a healthy psychosis. But that is a subject for another post. So step one is get right mentally with it so I can deal with things logically instead of staying in a bummer emotional state.

Understand the Actual Numbers

I calculated our expected income against the normal fixed costs and charge entries that will be due with this. I did that to see where we are and what to expect. The monthly medication cost through Costco is $163. Not knowing how long we will be helping our little guy means I have to figure out a way to come up with this existing monthly cost. I also need to slowly rebuild the emergency fund for the money coming out for this month’s Veterinary charges.

I believe we can sometimes make things bigger in our mind. Once we sit down and do some simple math we can bring things down to a logical level and start to move forward. If this budget hit was the result of anything other than our non-expected issue and was instead caused by some short-term bad spending decisions or losing our financial reasoning powers. Then looking at the numbers would hopefully be enough to shake us up. So we can to get back on track to resume our smart-frugal routine.

What I have found is that the longer we go budget-rogue. The harder it is to get back to the game plan. What I mean for example. Going out more than usual can become a habit harder to break than just dealing with an unexpected budget knockdown. It is important that we get ourselves on track as soon as possible, move some money around to cover the hit, and then set any necessary emergency fund replenish plans into motion.

Create The Money Plan.

I have worked an early retirement side hustle the last couple of months and have a soft commitment to continue through another 5 months. I had 85% of that salary go to funding my 401K for 2014 and I plan for the next 5 months of pay going forward to reduce that to 50%.

My take-home pay has only been a couple of hundred dollars a pay check but that will increase now and should still be able to fully fund my 401k for 2015. I will use that take home increase to replenish the emergency fund and set aside some money to take care of the new monthly medication costs.

So my budget isn’t really damaged because I can still pay all my monthly bills and the pet care cost because I do have this short-term side gig. Now I was really looking forward to maxing out my 2015 Roth, adding to my savings and investments above and beyond the 401k. I have a choice on whether to consider what I could do to still meet those full savings desires.

Normally without the side gig going and something like this happening I would immediately look to somehow increase income and/or temporarily scale back my lifestyle costs. Below are the things I would do and are probably similar to what anyone could do to create their own plan.

Short-Term Money Plan

• Because I live fairly frugally already my first move would be to see if I can bring in more income by starting a side hustle or selling anything that I really don’t need or seldom use. If I had a full-time hourly job I would be volunteering for over time but those days are past for me. I have sold many things on Craigslist like a VCR, small furniture, and even a set of automobile wheels I had stopped using. I could also use eBay to sell anything that can be shipped easily to a larger market.
• I have an automotive hobby. If things were totally terrible I could sell a car (my wife would jump on that), but let’s please stay reasonable here for gaining some short-term cash and I won’t be mentioning that out loud. The easy thing I could do is drop insurance on an unused car or two to cut monthly cost and once the budget was stabilized I then could restart the insurance. One motivator to getting the budget back to normal is getting to have access to my car again. I think many of us could go down to one car short-term if you have more than one in your budget.
• Take spending money on anything that can be done at home off the table. That includes eating out, movies, and any entertainment or activity (i.e. Gym membership) that costs money to do.

I am sure there are many possibilities to find some extra cash to get through a budget hit.

In Conclusion

Recovering from the blown budget blues has two steps. First getting over the emotional aspect so you can clear your mind and then secondly getting real with a plan.

What have you done to overcome the blown budget blues?