We’ve been out of graduate school for ~10 years now, which means a lot of the stuff we own is now ~10 years old. We’re now at a point where the probability that something big is going to need to be replaced is pretty high.
Our cars are 10 and 11 years old.
Our 12-year water heaters are 10 years old.
Our roof is getting on about 12 years.
Our refrigerator is something like 15 years old.
Our w/d are 10 years old.
Our dishwasher is 9 years old.
We’re not really sure which of these things is going to break down, or even how many are going to break down. We shouldn’t need the cost of all of these in our cash emergency fund, but the longer time goes on, the more plausible it is that we’ll need to cover two or more of these in a short time frame.
We’re pretty sure we can cash flow water heaters. Our cash emergency fund can handle one car, but not two. Or not one car and a new roof. Plus I’m kind of hoping that we can do solar with the next roof replacement (we’ll see!) — even if there aren’t government incentives, DH likes new technology and I like the idea of lower a/c bills in the summer (even if we don’t actually save money), which would add considerably to a new roof expense.
I feel like if we have enough in savings to get us through the unpaid summer should DH permanently lose his job and to handle a major expense like most of a new car, then we should also be ok for the future, even though it might mean having to take on a temporary loan or to sell stocks. I don’t think we need to have a targeted savings account for each of these major expenses as hopefully we’ll have time to replenish the emergency fund after one comes due, but maybe I’m wrong.
How do you deal with big lumpy unexpected but still kind of expected expenses? Does everything expire around the same time for you or have you spaced things out?
