how much do you keep in your emergency fund? - Page 2

[mtm]

2000 readily availabe and 6 months expenses in an online acct.

[Tradd]

Originally Posted by rainbowmoon

just curious.

Well, I'm a Dave Ramsey follower, and while paying off debt, that's $1K in emergency fund. However, if circumstances warrant (new baby coming, job insecurity, etc.), beef it up by all means!

I've got two unpaid furlough weeks to take at work by Dec. 1 (first one is the week before Labor Day, the other one in November). That means I'm stashing all the cash I can in my EF. It's now up to $1700.

[Fujiko]

We have $10,000 in savings right now. That's for all types of emergencies-medical, vehicle, home, emergency travel, dh loses his job, etc. It's also our savings account for other things, like home improvement (we'll need to be doing a lot in the next five years). DH also doesn't like the checking acct to go below $500 (or $1000 if we aren't tight on money).

[Oh the Irony]

I now have $1050 that I have done by saving $50 a month.

My income is pretty modest and I have lots of expenses for special needs of kids, divorce and stuff.

I'm quite thrilled about having *any* savings and will keep doing the $50 a month. Will increase it when I get out of debt.

[velochic]

1 yr. of living like we do now or 2 - 2.5 yrs. stripped down to the essentials.

ETA: "living like we do now", but not saving a dime, that is.

[FondestBianca]

ok, I'll be brave and offer up the "other" end of the spectrum

once upon a time we had an emergency fund. Then we had several emergencies and pay cuts. Now it's gone. Along with dh's retirement fund. If we had excess after shelter was paid for we'd definatly get another emergency fund going. Right now, any money left after nessesary bills goes to buying food. This month there is only about $50 left after bills are paid... so if we don't buy any food, diapers, or non food consumables I guess thats our current emergency fund .

[Ofwait]

currently we only have 1300, in the overdraft account and 1500 in the emergency fund.

We had 20,000 but then our oldest daughter was diagnosed with cancer.... we are still financially recovering.

[PlayaMama]

we had about $3000 but lost a major client and now have about $900. ideally, any extra at all goes into the savings. eventually it will get built back up again. i'd like $5000 before we start working on anything else.

[Mamja]

We try to keep $10k, and have usually managed that. We also have a HELOC though.

[e(Lisa)beth]

$1K in my checking account, and $10K in ING

:

[maryjane]

We have $20K right now and are debating whether or not it needs to be higher. In addition, we have sink funds for predicted expenses -- license renewal, insurance premiums, our accountant, etc. In theory we have a car replacement fund as well, although our budget is so tight that we only save $25 a month toward that.

[RollerCoasterMama]

Goal: $15000. Reality: about $400. And that's to go towards moving to separate homes. Every time we get some extra money, it's sucked away in some crisis. I'm divorcing next year (as soon as we can afford to move) and I'm NEVER living like this again! No more paycheck to paycheck for me!!!!!

Good for you for thinking about it!

[Ruthiegirl]

Right now? Practically nothing.

We just (like 3 days ago) paid off our last credit card. We now have a substantial chunk of money to send to savings each month with a $10,000 goal. Should take us about 8 months.

[annethcz]

My current answer is that we save as much as we think is reasonable. We only have one savings account, and we regularly add to it. This savings account is not only used for emergency savings, but also as a sinking fund for any large purchases. I am still working on building up the amount of money in the account, right now we have a few months worth of expenses saved up. I think it will be a VERY long time before I feel like I have *too much* money in my savings account and need to move money to other places.

[xekomaya]

We have 7-8 months expenses sitting around in the highest yield savings acct. we can find, which is only like 1.9%, and some more in ING CDs. If I didn't feel so insecure about the market I would probably only keep 3-6 months at most uninvested.