Here's How Much I Spent Getting Ready for Hurricane Ian

A hurricane can take a big bite out of your budget. Here's what I spent.

Hurricane Ian is one of the more serious storms to hit Florida in recent years, and my home in Orlando is on track to face major storm activity.

While I've lived in Florida for many years, I've been lucky so far in that I have always been out of town for hurricanes. That's not the case this time. In fact, my entire extended family is in Florida for my son's third birthday and we are all weathering the storm in our new house together.

Because we'll be here for the hurricane, we needed to put some preparations in place -- and this cost money. Here's what we spent to get ready for the adverse weather.

Getting ready for a hurricane can cost big bucks

To be prepared for our first hurricane, we had to buy a number of things including:

• Extra bottles of water
• Groceries that we would be able to eat if we lost power for several days
• Extra flashlights and a lantern
• Batteries for the flashlights
• A portable fan to keep ourselves, and my elderly dog, cool if we lose power for an extended period of time and do not have access to air conditioning
• Activities to keep my kids occupied if we are trapped inside for an extended period of time, including some coloring books and a new game
• A full tank of gas to fill up the car at inflated prices, as many gas stations were sold out of gas near us

Collectively, we ended up spending $252 to buy these items, including purchasing a pretty substantial amount of water and groceries we normally would not have purchased as well as several large packs of batteries to power the different flashlights we already have.

Now, we had this money in savings, so this wasn't a huge hit for us -- but it was a reasonable amount of extra money that we had not planned on spending. And some people shelled out much more, including those who are buying hurricane shutters or generators, as well as individuals who had to evacuate their homes and pay for hotel rooms and gas for long drives.

How to make sure you're financially prepared for a hurricane

Obviously, having to spend so much extra money just to be ready for a storm wasn't ideal -- but it was important to make sure we are prepared if we get stuck at home due to the storm and lose power. We also took some money out of our bank account in order to make certain that we had cash available in case we need to buy items at stores before they get their power back on once the storm passes.

We were able to do that because we had some money in an emergency account. And if we had to evacuate, we would have been prepared for that as well since we could have used our emergency fund cash to pay for a hotel room.

Unfortunately, no one can ever predict when a storm is going to hit and it would have been a lot harder for us to get ready if we didn't have these funds available. This is why having emergency savings is so important. If you haven't yet saved for emergencies, consider starting as soon as you can so when a literal or figurative storm comes your way, you'll be ready.