Don’t Let Your Emergency Fund Create Emergencies

We all know the common advice: keep an emergency fund worth 3-6 months of your expenses.

That way, in case you lose your job, or some large expense comes up you’re not prepared for, you have that money ready to go to cover that emergency.

This is great advice, truly. I’m a big saver, and I’ve never once regretted it, and it’s come in handy many times.

But we know about another dimension of finance that’s often ignored by such advice, and it deserves being mentioned here.

Because, the truth is, an undue focus on emergency funds can, in fact, create emergencies.

Can You Be Too Prepared?

This came particularly to light for me because of a Facebook group I’m in.

There’s a budgeting software I love and recommend to everyone I work with, called You Need A Budget (YNAB). I will have many, many posts in the future extolling the benefits of using this budgeting software.

BUT… it does come with a sort of caveat, as I noticed in the YNAB Facebook group I’m a member of.

You see, one major tenet of the YNAB methodology is that you save for what are called your “true expenses”. Basically, they are any planned or unplanned periodic expenses that you can reasonably expect to incur, eventually.

These could be planned periodic expenses like annual property tax, periodic subscriptions, vacations, gifts, etc — as well as unplanned eventual expenses like car repair, home repair, computer replacement, new appliances, medical costs, etc.

And it really is a good idea to be prepared for a lot of these things, because such expenses will arise at some point.

But it’s easy to get too focused on those things, particularly the emergency expenses.

And so what I noticed in that group was that people would rave about how this massive expense came up, but they were prepared because they had saved for it in YNAB, or else they had enough money to take from other categories to easily be able to cover this expense.

And what became apparent to me over time was that they almost seemed to attract such emergencies by their very focus on preparing for them.

Such people would often have $50K+ in cash for various emergencies, and still feel unprepared or even like they didn’t have enough money.

And while this attitude is almost encouraged in that environment, I personally believe it can be unhealthy, and actually can act against your attracting of easy, effortless abundance.

It’s the Vibration that Counts

Again don’t get me wrong: I do believe you should save a significant portion of your income. I’ve always taken the principles of The Richest Man in Babylon to heart, which suggests saving at least 10% of your income.

But as with all things, it’s not about the action, but the attitude with which you carry out that action.

Save money from a place of fearing emergencies, and you’ll attract emergencies to use that money for.

But save money from the attitude of having an abundance and allowing that money to bring you safety, and you will be safe and may often never even need to use that money.

People tend to rely too much on the action, because honestly, that’s the only dimension they’re aware of.

But when you mix in the law of attraction, there’s a whole new dimension to think about. And really, that dimension is far more potent than the physical, action-based dimension.

It’s why some people never even save at all and the money just shows up for them in perfect timing, because they never worry about it and they know that everything will always work out for them.

If you have a solid vibration of abundance and security, quite literally nothing could harm you. You would be impervious to all emergencies because the money would always be there to cover whatever was needed in the moment.

As the channeled entity Abraham-Hicks always puts it, “There’s no assertion, only attraction.” That means, if you hold a strong vibration of safety, unsafe things can’t happen to you: they can’t assert themselves into your reality.

But it also means that if you hold a vibration of lack, abundance can’t assert itself into your reality. Your vibration is supreme and dictates exactly what results you will get in life.

so Why Save At All, Then?

If that’s the case, it brings up a very good question — and a question that’s at the root of all that Possible Promise is about: why even bother saving at all? Why take the action steps in the first place, if what matters is your vibration?

Let me answer that with my own questions:

• Why do you lock your doors at night?
• Why do you wear a seatbelt when you go out in your car?
• Why do you take medicine to treat an illness?

The truth is, we are also physical beings living in a physical world.

The law of attraction shows that this physical world is incredibly malleable and can bend to our predominant thoughts and beliefs.

But, we still have certain habits of thinking and believing that will always be with us. It’s why you can’t step off of a building and expect to fly — because you really, truly don’t believe that that’s possible.

If you were some transcendent enlightened master, then sure, you could almost certainly do anything you wanted to.

In fact, there are many stories of awakened masters doing things like consuming poison and not being affected, or healing themselves and others of serious illness without medication, or even levitating on demand.

But we’re normal, everyday people. And, we need to work with the physical world as we believe it to be.

We need a safety net. If our health vibration isn’t perfect, for example, and we do get sick, we have medication to help us get better. And we have strong belief in that medicine, which helps us to get back into alignment all that more quickly.

Balancing the Physical and the Vibrational

So it is with money. You can and should work on improving your abundance vibration. But it’s almost certainly not perfect, and there’s a chance you’ll trip over some belief one day and that abundance vibration will be disrupted.

And if that happens, you’ll be incredibly glad to have the safety net of an emergency fund. It plays the physical role of supporting you when you need it to, and also the vibrational role of helping you feel safe right now, knowing that you’re protected in case anything happens, which strengthens your abundance vibration even more.

So when we can meld the physical and the vibrational together in a way that they are interdependent and support one another, that’s ideal.

If you can create physical financial habits that support you vibrationally, then it’ll be so much easier to improve your money vibration to create even greater abundance for yourself.

But note I say those physical habits should support your money vibration, not disrupt it.

So if your physical financial habits cause you feelings of fear, or lack, or scarcity, then they aren’t supporting you — indeed, they are actually acting against you.

If that happens, then you can do one of two things:

1. Think about that habit in a different way that no longer evokes those negative feelings, or
2. Find different financial habits that generate positive feelings for you, not negative.

There was a period of time that I had to stop budgeting altogether because I was using it to intensify my feelings of lack and not-enough-ness.

Those few months were incredibly liberating, but they also helped me to see why I needed to budget, because I didn’t feel as in control of my money.

So I had to find a way to bring that feeling of freedom and abundance into my habit of budgeting, so I could feel in control and yet not restricted or lacking.

Letting Your Emergency Fund Serve You

And it’s the same with creating an emergency fund.

You have to find a way to save money, and yet not feel fearful of potential emergencies that could arise.

Someone I know, instead of calling it an “emergency fund,” calls it her “sunny day fund.”

You could also call it something like a “possibilities fund” — your fund that supports you in pursuing new, inspiring possibilities.

Or it could be your “safety net fund,” which catches you when you need it to. I particularly like this one as it evokes feelings of safety and security for me.

Play around with the name of it and see what works for you.

If it’s the act of saving itself that makes you feel restricted or lacking, start out small and increase your savings as you feel more comfortable with it.

But also notice how this act of saving makes you prepared for whatever life might bring. Feeling that sense of security, you can only attract more circumstances that make you feel even more financially secure.

Finally, use your growing savings account as a way of feeling even more abundant: you have so much money that you’re able to save a portion of it for the future. The Universe will see that rich mindset and send even more money into your life.

I personally like to celebrate each milestone as my cash balance grows. Every $5,000 or so that my bank account grows, I celebrate it and feel appreciation for it, which seems to speed up the process even more.

If you could let your feeling of abundance be determined not by how much you can spend, but how full your bank account is and how fast it is growing, that would do a lot to turn around your attitude about saving money.

Or, once you really have those savings working for you, you can start looking at how large your investment portfolio is. If using the phrase “investment portfolio” doesn’t evoke a feeling of wealth, I don’t know what does. I’ll talk about investments much more in future posts, as they’re another vital element to the building of lasting wealth.

The bottom line is, the financial habit of saving a portion of your money is important for building a safety net so you are prepared for the future.

But, you need to do this in a way that increases your feeling of abundance, not your feeling of lack, restriction, or fear of emergencies.

When you can bring together your financial habits with an appropriate understanding of the workings of the law of attraction, you will be far more successful than if you just relied on the physical habits on their own.

Abundance will naturally be attracted to you almost without effort. Struggle will be a thing of the past, because you’ll realize that struggle is never required. Instead, every step of the journey to your financial goals will be defined by effortless ease and joy.

Gain Control Over your Financial Situation

If you’d like to gain control over your financial situation using a combination of physical and vibrational techniques, let’s talk and see how I can help.

Schedule a Free Consultation