Starting an Emergency Savings Fund
March 25th, 2009
What is an Emergency Savings Fund?
An emergency savings fund is money that can be easily accessed when an unexpected financial need arises. This money can be kept in a savings account, money market or short-term CD. The only time you would take money out of this account is in an “emergency”.
Why?
Having an emergency fund will ensure that you’ll be able to support yourself and your family without taking on unnecessary debt during times of financial need.
If you lose your job, your roof starts to leak, your car breaks down… You can draw from your emergency fund instead of running up your credit card or taking out a high interest loan.
How Big?
At a minimum, you should keep at least 3 months worth of living expenses (e.g. Rent, Food, Transportation…) in your emergency fund. Ideally you want to have enough to cover 6 months – 1 years worth of living expenses in your fund.
How to Start
Start by putting 10% of your paycheck into your emergency fund. If you can’t afford to save 10% on your current lifestyle, consider cutting back on some of the convenience/luxury/entertainment expenses until you have at least 1 month of living expenses saved up and then continue to add to that monthly.
If you already have some savings on hand, you can designate that as your emergency fund and use it as starting point and build on that.
Written by: tim
Categories: Saving Money