Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: contingency fund questions

[Larry Miller (larry.miller]

We nominally had 10% of operating expenses in our contingency fund.
Recently, we had some unexpected repairs that consumed that 10% and more.
This is probably a good number.

Larry Miller

-----Original Message-----
From: Jodi Coleman [mailto:jodicoleman1000 [at] gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 10:18 PM
To: cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org
Subject: [C-L]_ contingency fund questions


Hello all,


Last year (our second since moving in), our community created a contingency
fund for unexpected and emergency expenses.  We took the excess from our
first year's budget (and the excess from each budget thereafter) to create
the fund.  We created the contingency fund so that each work team wouldn't
feel the need to have a sizeable miscellaneous/emergency line in their
section of our budget, and instead they would know that money could be
available to them if they needed it.  Going into our third year, we now have
a healthy amount of money in this fund, so we are now needing to decide
where to cap it.



We are wondering how much money (what percent of the budget) other
communities have in their contingency funds.  I have read that several
places have 10% of their budget as a contingency fund.  Is this 10% of your
operating budget, or is this the whole budget including any additions to the
maintenance reserves?  Have folks found your systems to be adequate?  Any
advice folks have would be greatly appreciated!



Jodi Coleman

Coho Cohousing, Corvallis, OR
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