This happens to us constantly as well. Every dollar we earn is assigned to something and, inevitably, something ELSE comes up. I had an emergency fund at one point and was doing pretty good at paying down debt but then some car repairs came up, other things came up, and the emergency fund was gone and my credit cards went back up.
I've decided now to just restructure all my bills, snowball my credit cards, and make an emergency fund part of the monthly bills (so as to assign money to that each month regardless). I can't continue this living paycheck to paycheck with nothing to fall back on. It's unecessary stress and I don't think anyone needs that in their lives!!
This is me as well. I started reading about Dave Ramsey and upon receiving quite a nice bonus (for me) around Christmas time, we got some expense problems fixed and I put $1000 into the emergency fund.
It took 4 months to deplete it. Everything was fine, I was way ahead in bills. Then gas prices started rising as well as groceries. I couldn't increase the budget by those amounts. The amounts are quite a lot. I am saving $100/pay in a separate account for car insurance and heating oil. Well, guess where the gas money started to come from. I was able to squeeze the next car insurance bill, but the final oil bill for this past season had to come from the e-fund ($424). Then both cars needed tires, 2 for Wifey's small SUV (expensive) and I was hoping 2 for my car. Unfortunately I had a flat on one of the good tires and was running on the spare until the rain stopped and I could change it back. I was hoping it was a winter fluke thing that it was flat. Nope, filled it with air and it wouldn't hold. So, 4 tires for mine. $300 for her car (with a wheel alignment) and $450 for mine. $1000 efund minus the $424 for oil left me $576. With that $576 I had to pay for $700 worth of tires. Money on a credit card, had to be done. I had 2 completely bald on her car, 2 completely bald and 1 completely flat on mine. Both cars got the cheapest I could find tires.
It is a never ending battle when you are paycheck to paycheck.
Eventually when I am out of debt, I plan to create funds for various things over my e-fund. Housing fund, car repair fund are 2 big ones. Owning a house, you are always going to have something. Sump pump goes out, appliance breaks, need a roof, furnace goes.... Same with car repairs. Oil changes are done regularly every few months. New tires needed every few years. Some cars need the timing belt and water pump done quite often. Mine is 60,000 miles (3-4 years) and that is a big maintenance repair. Generally timing belt is close or more than $1000. Times that by 2 cars and that's expensive (we both drive an average of 15-20,000 per year.)
These kinds of things are saved up with what Dave calls sinking funds. You set it aside for whatever expense you may have in the future that is not a monthly recurring. I pay car insurance every 3 months, sinking fund (currently being funded but that is what was taken for gas/groceries.) Heating oil averages every 6 weeks at $4-500 for me, sinking fund. When I am debt free, sinking funds will be established for home repair/maintenance and car repair/maintenance. These I would probably put a cap on, but the cap would need to be quite high for the house ($1000 appliances as they seem to go in pairs, new roof, new furnace in the future will run very high.) Car repairs won't be quite as high of a fund, but will still need to be sure I have $1000+ for tires every 3 years or timing belt replacement on top of the small stuff like oil changes, brakes, and exhaust replacements.
