As hard as you try, it’s difficult to plan for the unexpected, especially when it comes to surprises that affect your finances and budget. Sometimes problems come out of nowhere. Your water could heater break down and flood your basement; the dreaded check engine light might come on in your car; your daughter may fall on the playground and break her arm. That’s when having an emergency budget comes in handy. Here’s what you need to know about budgeting for emergencies.

How Much Should Be in Your Emergency Fund?

Your emergency fund should be able to cover the essentials: housing, food, utilities, insurance, transportation, personal expenses, and debt payments. How much you should try to save depends on your situation. If your family has a double-income and steady employment, it’s recommended that you keep three months worth of expenses in your emergency fund. If your family has one income, or your income is variable, financial experts suggest having a six-month emergency fund.

If you’re a single divorced parent, you should combine your child support payments and your net income when determining how much to keep in your emergency fund. It would be best if you tried to save 10% of the combined amount. Child support is payable until the child turns 21 years old, so starting a savings account as soon as possible would be most beneficial.

While an emergency fund provides a safety net if you lose your income, it’ll also ensure you’re prepared for any sudden expenses that pop up.

Planning for Household Emergencies

You wake up one morning and find that you have no hot water. Are you prepared to spend thousands of dollars on a new water heater? If you had an emergency fund, you would be! Many appliances and other parts of your home are designed only to last a certain amount of time, for instance:

• Furnaces are designed to last for approximately 15 to 20 years.
• Traditional tank water heaters last an average of 8 to 12 years. Tankless models have a longer lifespan of 20 years or longer.
• Refrigerators last around 13 years.
• Dishwashers last around nine years.
• Gas ranges can last around 15 years.
• Asphalt roofs will likely need full replacement after 15 to 20 years, on average.

Knowing when you can expect your appliances to fail can help you plan for the expense. It’s also important to keep up with regular maintenance of your HVAC system and repair problems as soon as you notice them. It’s much more cost-effective to repair a small issue on your furnace than wait until it turns into a bigger, costlier problem.

Planning for Medical Emergencies

Medical emergencies can be financially devastating. Even with health insurance, medical expenses can pile up when you factor in things like emergency room visits, ambulance rides, lab fees, hospital stays, prescription costs, medical supplies, and copays.

One way to curb the expense of a medical emergency is to know when a trip to the emergency room is needed. A national study found that around 30% of visits to emergency rooms are potentially unnecessary. It’s much less expensive and effective to go to urgent care or a primary physician for common, mild conditions like:

• Cold symptoms
• Headaches
• Earaches
• Sprains
• Bee stings
• Minor cuts or scrapes

Going to a medical facility right away will benefit your health as well as your wallet. Seeing a doctor when you spot a tick bite, for instance, is important because a tick can transmit Lyme disease just 36 hours after attaching to its host. This medical emergency might be stressful, but knowing you’re prepared with an emergency fund will help you stay healthy and handle any surprise medical costs with ease.

You can’t always plan for the unexpected. However, setting aside some money in an emergency fund will help you prepare for the worst and give you peace of mind that you’ll be able to handle anything life throws at you.

It’s no secret that college is expensive. Students who want to receive a college education must apply, buy textbooks, pay for courses, and pay for on-campus housing if need be. On-campus housing additionally requires the purchase of a meal plan as well as bedding and other accessories for a dorm or apartment. All of these expenses add up, which is a reason many high school graduates choose to attend a community college or a trade schol, join the military, or attempt to find a job. If your teen has their mind set on attending a four-year college after graduating from high school, there are several ways they can start saving now. Look to these seven options and start brainstorming with your teen.

1. Open a Savings Account

First and foremost, if your teen doesn’t already have a savings account, open one in their name. Putting money into this account and leaving it there to stay will allow the account to grow and accrue interest. By the time your teen goes to college, this account should have a good chunk of money in it to help pay for educational expenses.

2. Get a Part-Time Job

Secondly, your teen can find a part-time job to earn money. Working at a local grocery store as a cashier or stock person, at a sporting goods or clothing store as a retail salesperson, at a restaurant as a busser, at a pharmacy as a technician, or at an ice cream or food stand as a scooper or cook are popular jobs that many teens work during their high school years. A summer job at one of the 16,000 public and privately-owned campgrounds nationwide could be a fun gig, too. RVers are free to roam America’s roads for a weekend or months at a time, and your teen could be a worker that helps set up the areas in which RVs park.

These kinds of jobs allow flexibility between school, homework, sports, volunteering, and other extracurriculars, such as the school play or an after-school club. Not only will having a part-time job earn your teen money for college, but it’ll also give them an opportunity to learn responsibility and time management. It won’t look too bad on a college application, either.

3. Set a Spending Budget

Along with getting a job, you can help your teen set up their paychecks so that the majority of the money goes to their savings account while $20-$40 a week goes into their checking account for spending money. Spending money can be used on gas and other car expenses, food and drink, and other fun activities with friends. By budgeting money this way, your teen will learn how to live within small financial means while in high school. This will make the transition to college easier, as college living is living on a budget. It will also help your child’s savings account grow a whole lot faster than if all of their paychecks went straight to their checking account. By following this method of spending, your teen should go to college with a hefty amount of money in their savings account.

4. Save Gift Cards

Your teen is likely given gift cards for birthdays, holidays, and other special occasions by relatives and friends alike. Advise your teen to keep every gift card gifted to them while they’re in high school. When they go to college and have limited means, having a bunch of gift cards handy will be helpful when grocery shopping for snacks, buying clothes and other accessories with friends they meet at school, and purchasing items for their dorm. They may get gift cards to chain restaurants they can use while going out with friends or to small businesses, which account for 99.7% of all business in the United States, that they can use to buy trinkets for their dorm room. Your teen will be grateful they saved their gift cards for a time when their finances are limited and they’re trying to live on a strict budget.

5. Sell Unused Clothes and Items

If your teen has unused clothing and random items hiding out in the back of their closet, help them go through them. Throw out what’s too old or grimy, but set aside any clothing and other items that could be sold. Utilizing an app or website to sell these items is a good way to go about finding purchasers, and selling clothing at a consignment shop is another option, too. While a lot of money won’t be earned this way, it’s worth placing in your teen’s savings account for college expenses down the road.

6. Take High School Courses for Community College Credit

Another way to save money for college is by enrolling in courses in high school that offer community college credit. If your teen plans to attend a state college or university or knows a handful of private colleges that they’d want to attend, be sure the community college credit will transfer to those colleges. This will avoid a hassle when it comes to transferring credits down the road. Community college credit courses offered by high schools are typically much cheaper than a private, state, or even typical community college course that would be taken after high school. Take advantage of these kinds of opportunities if they’re available to your teen.

7. Apply for Scholarships

Finally, your teen should apply for as many scholarships as they can. There are several unique ones out there that can be applicable to your teen’s life. For example, there are scholarships available to individuals of color, individuals in low socioeconomic situations, and even individuals whose parents are divorced. Since there are two divorces every minute in the United States, this isn’t much of a surprise.

Help your teen find scholarships and come up with unique topics for essays they must write for applications. While it’s a lot of work, it can be well worth it if they win scholarships. $100 could go toward textbooks, and $6,000 could go toward tuition. Your teen will never know how much scholarship money they can earn unless they try!

There are several ways your teen can save and earn money for college while they’re in high school. Go over these ideas with your teen, and see how you can help them save money for college expenses that will be here before you know it.