Emergency Funds, Splurge Accounts and the Epilogue of the Rick Springfield Saga
on Aug 14, 2026
A good financial plan isn’t just about preparing for retirement. It’s also about being prepared for life.
Recently, my refrigerator stopped working. It was one of those expenses that wasn’t on the calendar, wasn’t in the budget, and certainly wasn’t something I was excited to spend money on. But appliances don’t pay much attention to our financial plans. Eventually, something breaks, needs to be repaired, or needs to be replaced.
That experience was a good reminder of one of the simplest—and most important—principles of financial planning: Financial security isn’t about preventing unexpected expenses. It’s about being prepared when they happen.
Two financial tools can be particularly helpful: an emergency fund for the things we don’t expect and a splurge account for the things we do want. They serve very different purposes, but both can make your financial life more resilient.
Your Emergency Fund: Preparing for the Unexpected
An emergency fund is money set aside for expenses that are necessary, unexpected, and difficult to predict. A broken refrigerator is a good example.
Other examples might include:
- An unexpected car repair
- A broken water heater or HVAC system
- A major home repair
- An insurance deductible
- An unexpected medical or dental expense
- A temporary interruption in income
- An emergency trip to help a family member
We don’t know exactly when these things will happen, but we know they are likely to happen eventually. A refrigerator breaking could have used dollars in a Home Maintenance Fund if the event was foreseeable. But it was a 2019 model and should have had plenty of years left. But it became a financial emergency when there wasn’t enough money available to deal with it. And if we’ve talked over the last 8 months, you’ll know why my Home Maintenance fund has been exhausted!
An emergency fund changes that equation.
Instead of not being able to pay off the credit card for a repair or taking money away from another financial goal, you can use money that was specifically set aside for situations like this.
The refrigerator is still broken. The expense is still annoying. But it doesn’t have to derail the rest of your financial plan.
Saving Is Harder Than It Sounds
“Just save three to six months of expenses” is easy advice to give, but actually doing it can be much harder. We give our clients these targets, but also understand that housing, food, insurance, healthcare, transportation and other everyday expenses have all put pressure on household budgets. For many people, there simply isn’t a large amount of money left over at the end of each month.
To illustrate the challenge, Bankrate’s 2026 Emergency Savings Report found that only 30% of Americans would use savings to pay for a $1,000 emergency expense. Overall, just 47% reported having sufficient liquidity or access to funds to cover a $1,000 emergency expense.
That is a good reminder that difficulty saving isn’t necessarily a matter of poor financial discipline. For many households, the math is genuinely difficult.
How Much Is Enough?
There isn’t one magic number that works for everyone. A common guideline is to maintain three to six months of essential living expenses, but your appropriate emergency reserve depends on factors such as:
- Stability of your income
- Whether you are single or part of a dual-income household
- Your employment situation
- The amount of debt you carry
- Your insurance coverage
- Your home and vehicle
- Whether you have dependents
- Other resources available to you
For someone who currently has very little saved, the goal doesn’t have to be “save three months of expenses immediately.” Start smaller. More importantly…start.
Think in stages:
- First goal: Build a starter emergency fund, perhaps $500–$1,000.
- Next goal: Build enough to handle a larger unexpected expense without relying on credit.
- Longer-term goal: Work toward an emergency reserve that provides several months of essential expenses, based on your individual circumstances.
And remember: using your emergency fund doesn’t mean you failed. As I’ve said before, “this is the emergency you’ve been saving for!” so there’s nothing wrong at all when you’re using it for exactly what the account was designed to do.
Then once the immediate problem is solved, you can focus on rebuilding the balance.
The Case for a Splurge Account
And then there is another pool of savings that deserves more attention than it sometimes receives: Fun!
A financial plan can become overly focused on everything we should be doing with our money: Save for retirement, pay down debt, build an emergency fund, pay taxes, invest…
Those things are important. But life is happening today, too. That’s where a splurge account can be useful. A splurge account is simply money that you deliberately set aside for something enjoyable. Think of it like an ‘emergency’ fun thing that suddenly came up.
Why a Splurge Account Can Make Budgeting Easier
Imagine that every dollar of your monthly income has already been allocated to expenses, savings and financial goals.
Then a friend invites you to birthday dinner at a restaurant that is more expensive than you would normally choose. Would you say no because it isn’t in the budget, or put it on a credit card and worry about how you’ll pay for it later? Instead, if you have a splurge account, you can simply say to yourself: “I’ve already saved for this kind of thing.” That’s a very different feeling.
Suppose after you’ve allocated for your expenses, savings goals and investments there is $25 or $50 left at the end of the month for you to put into a separate account for fun. After several months, you might have a few hundred dollars available.
Then you see Rick Springfield will be performing, and you know you and your friend have to go!
You haven’t raided your emergency fund.
You haven’t reduced your retirement contribution.
You haven’t created credit-card debt.
You haven’t “blown your budget.”
You followed your budget.
The money was specifically set aside for enjoyment. More specifically, it was to finally see Rick Springfield after his pandemic-era concert was cancelled. More on the show below.
A Good Financial Plan Makes Room for Enjoyment
There is a psychological benefit to this approach as well. If a financial plan tells you that you should never spend money on anything unnecessary, it can eventually feel restrictive. And restrictive plans aren’t always sustainable.
A better approach is to recognize that financial planning is about more than maximizing how much you save. It is about making intentional choices about how you use your resources—both today and in the future.
Your emergency fund provides protection.
Your retirement savings provide for the future.
Your goal-based savings help you accomplish specific objectives.
And your splurge account gives you permission to enjoy some of your money along the way.
And now back to Rick
I first discussed splurge accounts 6 years ago when I was devastated that, due to the pandemic, my VIP, front row seats to see Rick Springfield were canceled.
On February 7th 2020, I wrote The Unintentional Splurge (And What To Do Next) which documented the process of coming up with funds for tickets and my excitement about seeing this show. At that time, I called some extra cash a ‘slush fund’ and made some budgetary sacrifices in order to stay on track with my other savings goals.
Then came the pandemic and August 3rd, 2020’s article Things Don’t Always Go As Planned. As expected, the entire show was later cancelled, not just Rick Springfield. At that time, I created the Splurge Account with the refunded money, and did my best to be optimistic.
I had a right to be optimistic–I finally got my amazing show. This is what happened:
I bought tickets in row E. Not front row, but really quite close. He played all the hits and some newer music—fantastic! During the song Human Touch, Rick Springfield goes out into the audience. He typically does this. He was stepping on the armrest and hopping over seats, and as he was zigzagging up the first several rows, he ended up stopping right in front of me and my friend, Windee! Everyone else was reaching out to touch him (the song was Human Touch, after all), he even leaned over to take a selfie with the girl next to me. I was dazzled that Rick Springfield was literally right in front of me! I saw Windee reach out so I reached out my hand as well, and he grabbed my hand to balance himself as he turned to walk on the armrests down the row. But before he moved forward, he swayed back a bit, losing his balance a little for just a split second. I felt his grip on my hand got tighter.
At that point I grabbed his arm with my other hand to steady him. I was so worried that the 76-year-old Rick Springfield was going to fall directly in front of me, and I definitely didn’t want to be responsible for not keeping him safe! What seemed like minutes of sheer panic for me was really only seconds. He steadied himself and kept singing without skipping a beat. He hopped down the rest of the row, got off of the chairs in the aisle, looped around and made his way back to the stage.
Windee turned to me and asked, ‘Are you all right?’ I’m fairly certain I just looked stunned. I responded to her ‘What just happened?’
It had been six years exactly since the front row meet-and-greet tickets with Rick Springfield were canceled due to the pandemic. I think this made up for it.
