The lost jobs accompanying the current coronavirus should inspire us to get or keep emergency fund of from three to six months’ net spendable income.

I have one.

Then again, I am 77 years old with no dependents. My wife has her own emergency fund.

Back when I had children … Oh, did I have children! One, two, three, four, five, six. I paid bills once a month.

My now-grown children mirthfully tell their children, “When Grandpa paid the bills, we learned many new words, in English, in Italian, even a few in German and in Russian. One sentence, minus the obscenities, went like this: ‘Should I pay the heating bill or the electric bill this month? Can’t pay both!’ ”

Ah, yes. The “good” old days, when we spent about 105 percent of our disposable income. The boys had an uncanny talent for outgrowing new shoes two weeks after we had bought them. The girls would simply “DIE!!!” if clothing styles had changed and they had to wear their same old clothes again.

Stashing money for an emergency fund was impossible.

That’s what I thought. That is what I told myself.

So I never got serious about saving money.

If we had been forced into a no-work lockdown like today’s state-ordered confinement, we would have become charity cases. Even with charity, we probably would have lost our car, perhaps lost our home.

“I can’t save,” I told myself.

Actually, I would not save, for three reasons.

First, we had more mouths to feed than we could comfortably provide for. We could provide — uncomfortably. The heating bill did get paid, sooner or later. So did the electricity bill and the other bills.

We lived frugally enough to come close to breaking even. When we got a tax refund, overtime work hours or other unexpected money, we made up for our shortfalls. Mom always gave me money for my birthday and Christmas. She was a generous woman, yes. But she had lived in a multi-child household during the Great Depression of the 1930s. She knew that I needed an extra $20 more than I needed another new shirt.

The second no-save reason was that whenever I got $1,000 ahead, I spent it. I grew up with the rust-prone trade-every-four-years cars of the 1950s and 1960s. So in the 70s and 80s, I had to have new cars, even though cars had improved by that time to where buying late-model used was sensible for cash-crimped parents.

I know where that spend-now urge came from, too. My apparently healthy Dad died of a stroke one night when I was an impressionable young teenager. That prompted two contradictory impulses. I never did go deeply into debt; I had seen how suddenly financial disaster could strike. Then again, I spent rather than saving. I had seen the wishful thinking of denying my family or myself today’s pleasures in anticipation of a tomorrow that might never come.

Looking back, I can see how I should have made some effort toward an emergency fund that would have been a lifesaver in the equivalent of today’s coronavirus blowup of our economy.

If I had been realistic about it, I could have found money each month, perhaps just $5 or perhaps all of $50, to put into an emergency fund.

I could have put that money somewhere where it would have taken considerable effort to get it back out: Savings bonds, certificates of deposits, heck, even in a safe deposit box in a bank in another town. I could have buried it in our side yard, except that neighbors might have gotten curious as to why I was digging holes in the dark, muttering, “The money jar is here somewhere!”

Even if I had been out of work back then, I could have set aside pocket change. I could have quit smoking and saved those quarters … if only I had not convinced myself that I could not save.

That was the third reason. I had convinced myself that I could not save, which gave me permission to not save. Dumb. Retrospectively dumb.

“Opsimathy” is a wonderful word. It means, “learning or education that occurs late in life.” Now, at age 77, I do have that emergency fund. I started it in my 50s, when we were down to two children at home. I used a near-automatic trigger for most of it. I diverted half of the take-home pay from each raise, bonus etc. into a savings account in a bank in another town, then periodically shifted money from it into the emergency fund. It came in handy last year to replace a section of roof. This year, I am replenishing the fund, dollar by dollar.

I won’t nag now-grown children or grandchildren about this. Nagging elders soon became “Let their phone call go to message” elders. But our children and grandchildren do read these columns. I hope they take the hint, either now or when the lockdown ends and “normal” income resumes. I hope your younger family members do as well.

Coronavirus lesson: Start now to prepare for next time. Next time will arrive, sooner or later. So stay safe financially.

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Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.