Insurance WHOAs

I mentioned that our car and homeowners insurances went up about 50% for the coming policy year.  Not good.  Our current policy was 1768 for car (going up to just under 2500) and 478 for home (going up to 730)

We collected several quotes, and finally made a decision.  The new policies will be 1148 for auto, and 678 for home.  That is a savings of  1152 over what our new policy was going to be.  And 420 better than our policy as it currently stands.  Sounds good, right!

Here's the kicker....apparently we have been paying "as we go" on our current auto policy.  So even if we cancel, they won't owe us anything, since we weren't paying in advance.  The new policy wants us to pay 6 months in advance.

In order to get the savings, we have to cough up $574 NOW to get the policy started.  OUCH.

Once we get started, we will be fine.  We will continue to contribute on a bi-weekly basis for our insurance, and in 6 months when the premiums are due, we will already have the money ready to go.  But that $574 now....*sigh*

The most logical way of doing it is to take it from our emergency fund (which is just under $1500).  This will officially drop us below the $1000, and this makes me wildly nervous.  We can build it back up, but I just feel like once we take it out, it will be THAT much harder to rebuild, and what if something else happens??

I hate feeling crunched.  I hate it, I hate it, I HATE IT!  Why is it everytime we find a way of saving a few bucks, there is always a catch?