One of the most important things about having your emergency fund is to decide why you need one. Everyone needs to have some sort of cushion to fall back on when times get rough but you still personalize it even more.

I decided to get my emergency fund after watching an episode of Girlfriends. In this episode,, Joan had lost her job and was talking to Toni about needing money. Toni revealed that she had half a million dollars (or was it one million even?) in her Never Go Back To Fresno fund. Toni worked as a real estate agent and she realized that while her income was great it was not very steady. She decided to save diligently and build up a fund that she could rely on if she was in a down period. This money would ensure that she never had to go back to Fresno, which is where she was born into a poor, dysfunctional family.

I liked the idea so much that I decided to start my own Never Go Back to Fresno fund and I even decided to call mine by the same name, even though I had no idea where Fresno was.

I built up my little emergency fund slowly because at the time I was paying down other large amounts of debt. I had built up the fund to a little over a thousand dollars when I decided to cash it in and completely pay off one debt that had been lingering for quite some time.

I like the idea of having ready access to cash that I can get my hands on that is still earning some kind of interest.

I like the idea of just having a cash base that I can draw from because there are a few situations that I might be in that call for cash.

I like seeing the little graph in Money that shows my little emergency fund is growing.

I like being able to say I have an emergency fund.

Why do you save money in your emergency fund?

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In my quest to save money and make money online I recently signed up for SocialSpark . This is a system much like PPP that allows advertisers to find you based on certain characteristics of your blog.

The neat thing with Social Spark is that they have mandatory nofollow links so that you do not get slapped again for having sponsorship that unfairly gets the benefit of good SEO by sending you some money.

They do adhere to a strict code of ethics as listed below:

-100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
-100% Transparency
-100% Real Opinions
-100% Search Engine Friendly

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I was speaking about ways to save money with a coworker who mentioned that she wanted to buy a house soon. She was worried about the rate she would get because she knew her credit score was bad .

This person, I’ll call her S, said she had a lot of unpaid medical bills and phone bills from her past. There were also a few bills that had been late in the past but then she had settled with the company so she hoped that had already dropped off her credit report.

S told me she was thinking of hiring a credit repair company to clean up her credit report because she had heard they could take items off. This is the point where I had to stop her and put on my Personal Finance hat. In the short time that I have been blogging about my personal finances I think I have learned a few things that I could share with someone.

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credit report stories - May 12, 2008

Welcome to the May 12, 2008 edition of credit report stories.

KCLau presents Everything you are looking for about Bursa Malaysia posted at KCLau’s Money Tips , saying, "A list of sources for you to learn about stocks and shares"

Madeleine Begun Kane presents Cautionary Verse posted at Mad Kane’s Humor Blog .

KCLau presents Don’t be stupid! Keep paying. posted at KCLau’s Money Tips , saying, "About why paying premiums for your existing policies is the best form of savings you can have."

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Welcome to How I Save Money and tracking of income and expenses for the month.

Income for the month to date: $126.24

Expenses for the month to date: $1201.24

Net effect: -$1075.00

The income for the month thus far came from my sponsors and some interest that I earned on my Never Go Back To Fresno Fund and other online savings accounts.

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I recently read a very interesting post called Why I might bounce so quickly from your site and I left a comment. The writer, Jude, then left a response to my question in the form of the following post: How I Save Money Blog Review .

Now while I was not necessarily looking for a link back, I appreciated the effort this person took to actually look at my blog and give honest feelings about what he liked or did not like about my blog. I ended up reading more of this blog…and subscribing to the feed so I can get more of Jude’s insights in the future.

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Here are my favorite recent posts from the members of the Wealth, Money & Life Network.

Dividends 4 Life shows us how to save money by giving the Gift Of Nothing . Now I must say I was a bit disturbed as I read the first sentence because I thought this guy was being WAAAAY too cheap…but then I realized what he was talking about.

Dollar Frugal shows us how she Did Not Save $80 On Insurance . This reminds me of the time I ended up Switching To Geico to save money on my car insurance . It sounded a bit cliche but I tried them and really did get a better deal, but I almost missed out on it because I thought Geico was just a gimmick.

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I got LASIK surgery in December 2007 and was able to get a great deal to save money by not having any interest payments on the balance. I want to wear colored contact lenses again so I thought I would call up the eye doctor where I had my LASIK done and get a prescription.

Now the last time I went in for an exam they told me that I could just call in to get the prescription because the brand of contacts that I wanted was not one they were really familiar with. I called the doctor to get my stuff set up only to be met with a brick wall.

I was told that most people who got LASIK never wanted to see another contact lens for the rest of their life …so the doctors there did not write prescriptions any more.

What they would do is to order the lenses for the person who really wanted them and the person would collect the lenses from the office. They then proceeded to tell me that this brand of contact lens that I wanted was not one they were affiliated with so they would not be ordering it for me.

Now this is what I don’t understand. Even if they do not write prescriptions because they do not carry prescription pads in the office..they know what my prescription would be. The place that I order my contact lenses from would call the office to verify that this was indeed the correct prescription. The piece of paper is simply something that I can have in my hands if I decided to walk into a store or if I needed to get the contacts on a Sunday when the doctor’s office was closed.

The REAL prescription is what is noted in my file and since the contact lens place has to call and speak to the doctor, who has to check the file, I don’t really NEED to have a physical piece of paper in my hand. Case in point where I ‘forgot’ the prescription one time and the contact lens place said they did not need it..just hold on a minute while they called my eye doctor.

So now they are refusing to give me the prescription over the phone or even tell me what my eyes measured at because they do not ‘give out prescriptions’.

They are telling me that I need to go to another doctor…and pay more money to have another eye exam done in order to get a prescription.

What do you think of this situation?


Update : After spending a long time on the phone I finally got through to someone who told me the reason they do not write prescriptions is because the doctor does not recommend that people wear contacts. He believes that the use of contacts puts your eyes at risk for infection so once he does the surgery you need to go somewhere else to get contact lenses because the office does not want to be ‘responsible’ for if you get an infection.

Okay now I understand the concern here…but how is it their responsibility if I get an eye infection from wearing contacts? If I am not responsible enough to take care of my eyes then that is my business. Once they do the surgery and you are clear within the time period what happens after is not the doctor’s concern.

Once the other eye doctors write the prescription it is not their business if you choose to sleep in the contacts or clean them with water from a puddle in the middle of the road.

They did finally tell me that I had 20/20 vision in both eyes according to the last visit..but said I could not get a specific ‘prescription’ because of the policy of the center.

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