Do you have an Emergency Fund? And if so, how many months worth of expenses do you have saved?

[melodyjg]

I'm 21 years old. I own my own detached condo. I work part time at a grocery store. Currently, I have about 8 months saved up. After tax time rolls around, I'll have at least 15 months saved. I know it's more difficult when you have kids but I don't plan on having any. At the end of every month, I have just about $200 leftover that I put into savings. Keeping track of spending and making good decisions has always helped me. Good luck to all of you!

Congrats to you for starting & planning early...It will go along way in life!!

[cintinative]

I have a question--do those of you with EFs have a separate account for things you are saving for (e.g. vacation or your next car)? We don't and that is a big problem for us. I think our emergency fund is pretty good right now but there is basically nothing in there for the other stuff that we need to save for, like our next car which we may need in 3 years. We really want to pay cash, but the prospect of saving that kind of money over 3 years is really intimidating. And before you ask about "vaction"--our vacation consists of visiting family members--unfortunately they all live 20 plus hours away. We try to visit one family a year, but the airfare alone is something like $800 for four of us most of the time. It really adds up.

[cjpsmom]

We have about 7-8 months saved up and trying to keep it up. I did pay off the only credit card today that ever had a running balance. Now I can put that (or most of it) towards the house principle. Yeah!

[jess323]

my DH is in the military, so we feel comfortable with a 3 month EF. Mainly its for tings with our new house, or car emergencies.

[OsweetchildrenO]

DH and I got married last September. No EF to speak of at the moment.
Prior to getting married...our finances were very separate. He did his thing and I did mine. Well he didn't do his finances very well. We are paying off all the debt, holding on tightly to our jobs and cutting back like crazy.
We have definitely made a dent and once we get out debt under control, 401k contributes will go up and we plan to save.
It's actually pretty interesting....in the past when I thought we were poor DH was able to come up with money in a pinch when we needed it.

[queenofthehivemomof5]

I have a question--do those of you with EFs have a separate account for things you are saving for (e.g. vacation or your next car)? We don't and that is a big problem for us. I think our emergency fund is pretty good right now but there is basically nothing in there for the other stuff that we need to save for, like our next car which we may need in 3 years. We really want to pay cash, but the prospect of saving that kind of money over 3 years is really intimidating. And before you ask about "vaction"--our vacation consists of visiting family members--unfortunately they all live 20 plus hours away. We try to visit one family a year, but the airfare alone is something like $800 for four of us most of the time. It really adds up.

This is the way I have set up my bank accounts:

We have a checking account at our local bank plus a savings account for which we keep $1000 balance in for right now emergencies (car breaking down, need a tow that sort of thing)

Then I have one ING account that hosts multiple savings accounts for which I do automatic transfers from my checking account each month.

In ING I have our Emergency Fund, Christmas Fund, New House Fund, Car Insurance Fund, Car Fund (because like you I like to pay cash for my cars and/or repairs), Renters Insurance Fund.

I also have a Smarty Pig account which pays a little more in interest that I set up about 4 months ago to just see how they work. In here I have automatic transfers set up for our vacation (we are going camping for a week in Yellowstone here in July), and I have a account for DH's birthday gift. This was a good option for short term savings goals.

For me, the best way I know how to save money is to just get it taken out of our checking account, to pay ourselves first. Having our accounts in online banking accounts makes it much harder to just access the money and blow it as if we need that money it take 2-3 buisness days to transfer. But because of that reason I do like to have an EF account that I can access immediatly if needed. (I also keep bit of cash on hand too just incase we cannot access the bank)

[OsweetchildrenO]

This is the way I have set up my bank accounts:

We have a checking account at our local bank plus a savings account for which we keep $1000 balance in for right now emergencies (car breaking down, need a tow that sort of thing)

Then I have one ING account that hosts multiple savings accounts for which I do automatic transfers from my checking account each month.

In ING I have our Emergency Fund, Christmas Fund, New House Fund, Car Insurance Fund, Car Fund (because like you I like to pay cash for my cars and/or repairs), Renters Insurance Fund.

I also have a Smarty Pig account which pays a little more in interest that I set up about 4 months ago to just see how they work. In here I have automatic transfers set up for our vacation (we are going camping for a week in Yellowstone here in July), and I have a account for DH's birthday gift. This was a good option for short term savings goals.

For me, the best way I know how to save money is to just get it taken out of our checking account, to pay ourselves first. Having our accounts in online banking accounts makes it much harder to just access the money and blow it as if we need that money it take 2-3 buisness days to transfer. But because of that reason I do like to have an EF account that I can access immediatly if needed. (I also keep bit of cash on hand too just incase we cannot access the bank)

Hi...I am curious...do you and your husband contribute to a 401k or some sort of retirement fund?
(I am 24...and oh so paranoid about the future in this aspect)

[queenofthehivemomof5]

Hi...I am curious...do you and your husband contribute to a 401k or some sort of retirement fund?
(I am 24...and oh so paranoid about the future in this aspect)

Yes we do. My DH has a 401k through his work. I need to get something set up for myself here soon since I work from home.

[MoneySavinDiva]

We did have close to two months saved up, but now we're down to under a months worth due to my being unemployed for a while. I finally found a job so my whole check is going into savings so that we can build it up faster. I'm hoping for a years worth in our EF by this time next year. I'm going to work hard to get it built up to a few months worth and then back off a little bit so we can start back up with paying higher payments on our house...we want to get the house paid off as soon as possible so we can start saving for an acreage and to build a house on that in about ten years...and we'd rather have 100% down than take a loan. Things were looking pretty grim for us moneywise up until about a week ago, and now it's really starting to look up, thank goodness!

[Sally C]

I have a question--do those of you with EFs have a separate account for things you are saving for (e.g. vacation or your next car)? We don't and that is a big problem for us. I think our emergency fund is pretty good right now but there is basically nothing in there for the other stuff that we need to save for, like our next car which we may need in 3 years. We really want to pay cash, but the prospect of saving that kind of money over 3 years is really intimidating. And before you ask about "vaction"--our vacation consists of visiting family members--unfortunately they all live 20 plus hours away. We try to visit one family a year, but the airfare alone is something like $800 for four of us most of the time. It really adds up.

Our "car fund" is separate from what I consider to be our emergency fund. In a true emergency, after all the savings is used up we could easily tap into the car fund for food.

Interestingly, our car fund is about the same amount as our emergency fund. We have three and a half months *income* (not expenses) in each of the funds and are working hard to boost both.

At the end of the week we start working on the college fund. That will be a separate fund again. It will be funded by dh's raise. I try to make it a policy to save all his raise money and keep our spending the same as it was before the raise.

It was hard for me to start the car fund because I thought it would be just about impossible to save up enough to replace both of our cars. But then I realized that the car fund is kind of like a high-value coupon. If I could have $6000.00 cash in hand while looking for a car, I might not be able to buy the $10,000 car out right, but I'd have 6k against it. That would leave only 4k for me to come up with--a lot less than the full 10k.

While starting a college fund I try to keep the same thing in mind. I may not be able to cover 4 years at a university for our daughter, but if I think in terms of covering one year at a community college and then two years, etc, the goal doesn't seem so impossible.

Things change along the way. We've been able to increase our car fund twice since we started it. All of this is to say, don't feel like it isn't enough to start with $50.00 at a time.

Sally