Let’s talk about the surprise party life likes to throw for your bank account… well, surprise expenses anyway, even if they don’t exactly feel like a party.

Surprise expenses may seem, instead, like lightning bolts, striking us unexpectedly and leaving us feeling financially vulnerable and defeated.

Whether you have a sudden car problem, unforeseen medical bills, or a leaky roof, these expenses arrive unannounced and unwelcome. Accordingly, surprise expenses are generally perceived as the villains of our financial stories.

The truth about surprises

However, the truth is more nuanced. Unlike actual lightning bolts, surprise expenses are common in our lives, even if they wear unique disguises each time they appear.

I’m sure you’ve experienced something like this yourself. Imagine you’ve sacrificed and saved meticulously for a new (or at least new-to-you) car, only to have your home’s air conditioning system go out just before you hit the car lot. All too often, this scenario throws us into a tailspin of frustration. 

But these situations are not isolated, unlucky incidents. They are actually totally normal, downright common experiences that we all have. In fact, studies show that nearly half of Americans faced at least one unexpected expense in the last 90 days. (The average cost of these expenses was $1,400; Lending Club Corporation, 2022).

And we all know this pattern extends to many different spheres of our lives, from repairing or replacing home appliances to fixing cars, replacing electronic devices, caring for pets, and maintaining our own health, among others. While they may look different each time, the occurrence of these types of expenses is a reliable constant.

Why the truth matters

It’s actually really useful to understand how common and normal “surprise” expenses are, because it helps us reframe these occurrences as acceptable, instead of unlucky and victimizing. Instead of considering them villains, we can normalize them as part of life’s ebb and flow – not the enemy of our money management, but the very reason we work at it.

This realization then helps us acknowledge that carefully planning and saving for one thing, only to ultimately redirect those funds in a more urgent, unexpected direction, is not a financial failure. It simply reflects life’s unpredictability and highlights the importance of your financial efforts overall.

Because if you hadn’t been saving up… (for that new-to-you-car, or whatever else), where would you have been when that A/C broke down?

Taking Action

Food-for-thought

So, if surprise expenses are just a normal part of life and money, what can we do to feel a little better when they happen? It all starts with how we think about them.

Instead of seeing unanticipated expenses as problems or evidence of our constant financial inadequacy, we will do much better when we think of them as opportunities for strategic problem solving. When we believe things should be different than they are (why did this have to happen now?!), we literally create our own suffering.

Thinking more positively about our finances will literally create a better life, even without changing the dollars and cents. In this frame of mind, surprise expenses are like challenges in a game, making life (and money management) more interesting (and dare I say, fun?) than it would be just following a repetitive monthly budget.

(Seriously, if life were that predictable, the human experience would be pretty thin and boring. Pleasantville, anyone?)

Unexpected costs are actually one of the top reasons to bother putting any thought or effort into money management in the first place. And each surprise helps us raise our game that much more.

Logistics

Okay, nice thoughts are one thing. But how can we logistically manage these blows when we can’t see them coming?

Instead of creating an exhaustive plan for every possible scenario (there are a lot), consider this approach: review how much total money you pulled out of savings last year for surprise costs, how much you put on that “emergency” credit card, or whatever other way in your system that will help you get a general ballpark estimate on how much you spent last year on unplanned surprises.

Bonus points if you do the same process (estimate, remember, not serious accounting) for other previous years.

This ballpark figure then gives you a realistic idea of what these unplanned costs actually amount to on an annual basis (& I have found this number to be crazy consistent over the years — more on my system here). You’ll have a clear and realistic target of how much per year must be made available to support these expenses… all the ones that may be unpredictable in terms of what, when, and how much for each, but are actually very predictable in terms of something, eventually, within about this much over 12 months.