My coworker showed up late for work today and seemed very out of sorts.
He looked like he hadn’t slept and his overall appearance was quite disheveled.
I knew something had to have happened because he is normally the most put together person I know so I headed into his office to see what was up. He told me that he had been up half the night due to the fact that his HVAC system had died around eleven o’clock the night before. He said that he was just getting ready for bed when he noticed a foul odor coming from the air vents. He then heard a loud rattling noise and the system shut off. He said that he hadn’t slept all night for fear of the house cooling off and the pipes starting to freeze. I can’t really blame him for that one as the night time temps last night dropped into the teens. I really don’t think they would have frozen that quickly but better to be safe than sorry. He said that he didn’t have the money to have the system serviced this year so he was hoping that he wouldn’t have problems. I guess that didn’t really pan out for him. Now he will be facing a repair bill or worse and he would have no choice but to finance it. I told him that I have a special savings account that I add a few dollars to each payday. This is my emergency fund so that when I need to perform maintenance or repairs around the house I don’t have to panic. It has taken me a while but I finally have more than a thousand dollars in there which can cover a lot. He said that he would have to start doing the same thing. He doesn’t have much left over after bills but even twenty dollars every other week is a start.