My financial resolutions for 2009, #2 in a series

Editor’s note: We asked our resident money experts to share their financial resolutions for the year ahead. Here, the second in our series:

1. Replenish our family’s emergency fund. As a personal-finance writer, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve preached the old gospel to keep at least three to six months’ worth of living expenses in cash. But these days I am far from practicing it. At this point I have maybe three weeks’ worth.

The reason is that we’ve had some big expenses since the October meltdown, and I have been loath to sell our poor, beaten-down stock funds in order to pay them. Instead I’ve all but depleted our cash reserve (kept in a low-expense, money market fund), hoping for the stock market to rebound. I remain confident that it will, if not in 2009, then perhaps in 2010 or, let’s say, 2743.  In any case, this year I am determined to get our emergency fund back to where it should be.

2. Not let this stuff drive me nuts. I have resolved to try to make the most sensible financial decisions I can in the current, less-than-ideal environment and not torture myself by engaging in endless what-if, if-only, and why-me? exercises. Nor will I take it out on my spouse, kids, dogs, or furniture.

None of us should suffer any more anguish than we already are, it seems to me, with the possible exception of the reckless fools who got us all into this mess. —Greg Daugherty, executive editor