Surprises in 2015? Yeah. FIL died penniless in Phoenix, leaving us with the $17,000 in funeral expenses. We were glad to do it to give him a proper send off in his home state but the cost was real and set us back on savings goals. Though we have ample emergency reserves, I chose to use our line of credit to instill some psychological pressure on myself to pay it back ASAP rather than allow myself to get slack after instead simply selling some stock to cover it. We've paid ourselves back all but $5,000 since it happened in July. We would have finished payback in December except then, BLAMMO, in October, DW was diagnosed with breast cancer at 52. Prognosis for DW is excellent as they caught it very early, thank Goodness, and it's her second go-round with it so we are battle-hardened cancer veterans and know the drill, unfortunately. We've had about $3,500 in associated out of pocket costs so far. She's a Fed, too, so it's been eye-opening that we've had that much to pay, though we obviously spent it without a second thought. Either Federal employee health insurance ain't what it used to be or drug costs are skyrocketing, or both. We are paying those bills with current cash so far. Again, addressing the scary episode emotionally is far more important than the pain of spending money in unwanted fashion, but both matters knocked us off our savings goals. Maybe the positive lesson is the real-life demonstration that having some resources and options for these speed bumps in life lets one focus on the actual speed bumps rather than the money, primarily, so we are grateful for our "odd" savings habits. We're mostly glad that 2015 is in the rear view mirror, though.
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That's not even enough downpayment to avoid mortgage insurance where I live... 
