It took me a long time and countless, thankless hours to kill off the debt because my parents weren't upfront with me in the very beginning about how much debt they had and did rack up more, but it's probably for the best. If I hadn't become aware of it in 10Kish chunks, I might have passed out. Oops, that was a digression.

I love having an emergency fund, but in my mind, it's incomplete without an expenses fund. From experience, my family is prone to .. well, anything, so I basically think of every possible thing that could happen in daily life and create a fund for it. And then back *that* up with unspecified cash because I simply don't know if at some point, I'll stop being able to earn income.

I may become less neurotic over time, but I .. doubt it.

1. Counting on credit being there. Yes, credit has been easy to obtain for most of our lives, but that might not always be the case. In fact, credit has been much harder to obtain throughout the recession, hence why people couldn't just keep borrowing. Many of us have had our limits lowered even while making above-minimum payments on time. If my husband and I had needed credit we would have been out of luck. We paid down one card and they lowered our limit to the new balance. We paid off another and they cancelled it. This is despite having a good income and stellar payment history. If they'll do that to us, how about someone in an actual emergency? Even if they did give you credit, it may be at much higher rates because they know they have you cornered.

2. Counting on income being there, including safety nets. You count on your disability payment, but the government isn't perfect. It screws up sometimes and money doesn't get where it needs to go in a timely manner. It takes time to get on food stamps. It takes time to get unemployment. I had a friend lose her job and it took her MONTHS to get the unemployment she was owed. The bills didn't stop coming, though.

3. Unexpected withdrawals. Unexpected expenses are one thing and you can put them on a credit card, however unexpected withdrawals are a good reason to keep money around somewhere for use until things get sorted out. For example, we have our mortgage on auto-pay, but one month it withdrew twice in about two days because the mortgage company had calculated the first payment wrong but then instead of refunding us the difference they sent through another bill thinking that the system would just ignore the first one. It didn't. Fortunately, we had enough in our checking as a "buffer"/ mini emergency fund to cover it until things got straightened out (which wasn't immediately as it happened at the end of the week).

So, yeah, I'm a big believer in having an emergency fund if there is any possible way to have one. I definitely sleep better at night having one and what I pay in interest to have one is not only worth it, it isn't so bad considering the what I might end up paying if I didn't have one and needed money quickly.