TACOMA — Ramona Tisdale opened the account in January with $1,000 and a definition. An emergency fund, she told her sister, is for emergencies. The sister agreed. Everyone agrees with this sentence. It is one of the most agreed-with sentences in American life, and it survives, on average, eleven weeks.

Ramona’s survived nine.

The Definitions

The first withdrawal was $340, in March, for a dishwasher. The dishwasher was not broken. The dishwasher was on sale, which Ramona classified as a time-sensitive event beyond her control, which is, she noted, essentially the definition of an emergency. The account balance did not offer an opinion.

In May, $180 left for concert tickets. The band had announced a farewell tour, and Ramona reasoned that a thing which will never happen again is the purest form of urgency available to a consumer. In June, $95 covered a wedding gift for a couple she had forgotten until the Thursday before. In August, $210 went to a flash sale on flights she did not take.

Each withdrawal was logged in the account’s memo field, where the word “emergency” appeared in quotation marks exactly zero times, because quotation marks require self-awareness.

What an Emergency Fund Is For

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which maintains an essential guide to building an emergency fund, describes it as money set aside for unplanned expenses — the car repair, the medical bill, the sudden loss of income. The guide does not mention dishwashers. Ramona has not read the guide. Reading the guide was never an emergency.

By November, the account held $61.11, which Ramona thought of as a start, the way one thinks of a single brick as a house.

The Transmission

The transmission went in December, on a Tuesday, at the intersection of two streets Ramona will now describe for the rest of her life. The repair was $2,400. The fund contributed its $61.11, which the mechanic accepted the way one accepts a coupon for a different store.

The rest went on a credit card at 24 percent, where the dishwasher, the farewell tour, and the flights not taken now live together, accruing interest as a group.

Ramona has since opened a new account with $1,000 and a definition. Her sister agreed with the definition. The sale flyers arrive in January.

(For a related piece on money leaving accounts quietly, see the Wattalife story about the subscription audit of June Okafor.)

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Margot Hale is the editor of Wattalife. Since reporting this, she has renamed her own savings account “No,” and reports that the account has never performed better.