In order to understand why the Rainy Day Fund should not be tapped, an agreement must be reached as to what constitutes a rainy day. I suspect the expression, saving for a rainy day, was coined by those who were paid daily and only had work when the weather was dry. If this were the case then a “Rainy Day Fund” would contain money set aside to replace an unforeseen lack of income.
Note, we are not talking about an “I overspent and now am short of money” fund nor a “my income has been reduce and I’ll have to learn to live on less” fund; a rainy day indicates income being cut off completely or at least temporarily severely reduced.
After the attack of 9/11/2001, the airline industry experienced a “rainy day”. Due to circumstances beyond their control they lost all revenue for several days and greatly reduced revenue for months. The phrase “circumstances beyond their control” is the key. No one can control the weather; therefore, any position one finds one’s self in due to decisions made, regardless of how bad those decisions were, is not a rainy day. No rainy day, no tapping the Rainy Day Fund.Want to know more? Go ahead: Voters to decide on a rainy-day fund for Philadelphia