Have An Emergency Fund

While traveling it is always a good idea to have an emergency fund of some kind in either cash and/or credit cards. You never know what is going to happen when you travel. Case in point. We have been at Faver Dykes State Park just south of St. Augustine, Florida. Again, because we promised the family we would be close during the holidays. Which in this case was probably a good thing. We were able to stay at Goldhead State Park for about a month (they were not that busy and they gave us permission) but we had to move to the next park on the list near Jacksonville. Our RV is too long for us to spend any time at Little Talbot Island State Park camping area and the other RV spots were too expensive.

Anyway, we developed a fairly bad water leak inside the RV and couldn’t determine where it was actually coming from. My brother came by and said he could help us with that but we had to come to his house in Live Oak, Florida so that he could work on it. That had to wait until our time was up at Faver Dykes. Then, a few days later we had to go out of the park and get groceries when the mini-van got hot. Luckily, we had only gone a few miles when the temperature gauge shot to red and were able to stop at a gas station. There was no antifreeze left in the radiator. We had to pay for a jug of antifreeze at the convenient store rate ($$$). We put the entire bottle into the radiator. We are keeping an eye on that as we cannot afford to take it into a shop just yet.

We still have a small leak at the back of the transmission on the RV. My brother and father both agree that so long as it is a small leak and we don’t smell burning transmission fluid it will hold until we can get the money to fix it. So, every 4 days when we go to dump the gray and black water tanks or before we leave for a new park we have to check the transmission fluid levels in the RV. Now that is a chore. It is located on the engine which can only be assessed inside the RV next to the drivers seat under a heat resistant panel that has to be unscrewed to take off and re-screwed back on once you are done or else that lid will pop up when you are driving and all those fumes go into the cabin.

To finally get to my point, when traveling, you really need to have an emergency fund to cover at least one major repair. We do have emergency road-side assistance coverage but that just gets a tire changed, a can of gas or maybe a tow to the nearest repair shop not for the parts or labor. We are on a very strict budget and repairs are way down on the list. I figured that since I had already spent over $4000 for the RV to be serviced and repaired and put $3000 into the minivan that should have held us until we got through most if not all of our 1st year. Little did I know.