When is it ok to touch your rainy day fund? Don't touch it until you read this article.

Don't foolishly fall into the trap that derails many financial plans and needlessly taps into people's emergency funds: mistaking a non-emergency for a real financial emergency. A financial emergency is something unexpected, not something that predictably happens every so often. 

Read our comprehensive article on emergency funds for more on the randomness of life and how so many things are unpredictable (that's why we have to have an emergency fund)

Here's what unexpected means: that you cannot reasonably anticipate the nature of the financial emergency in advance. You can of course anticipate that a financial emergency will occur based on the nature of our reality and existence, but you cannot reasonably predict what it will be.

Therefore, the following would not properly be considered financial emergencies:

• oil change
• new spark plugs
• child's college tuition payment
• wedding expenses
• Christmas (or other holiday) gifts
• birthday gifts

The above are not emergencies because we can anticipate them - we have anticipated them for you and we don't even know you.

Real financial emergencies, however, are things that we think might happen, but things we cannot predict in any reasonable way from where we currently are. We know we might get a flat tire or injure our ankle, but we don't know if that will ever happen, when it could happen, and the financial cost of it.

Do not confuse rare expenses with financial emergencies - you will not be served well by doing so because you will consistently fail to build lasting wealth if you dip into your emergency fund to pay for things that are not at all emergencies.