Emergency Fund

Saving Money for the Future

When trying to stretch every dollar of your paycheck as far as it will go, it can be a challenge to try and save some dough for emergencies. Most Americans save less than 5% of their annual income, despite efforts to put away more throughout the year. Things happen, and we can’t always save as [...]

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Net Worth and Goals: October 2010 – Up 4.4% and Emergency Fund Goal Achieved!

Each month I provide an update on how we’re tracking toward our goals. I break it down between Net Worth and Goals for the year. Net Worth: I didn’t publish a report last month but we were up 6.1%. Woot! And this month we’re up another 4.4%. But the real story, what I really want [...]

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How Far Would You Go To Maintain Your Lifestyle?

We recently got a Blu-Ray player with Netflix streaming capabilities. This allows us to instantly stream movies and TV shows versus having to wait for a DVD in the mail. I have to say it’s pretty cool. It’s opened up to us a wide array of shows from premium channels, like Showtime and Starz, that [...]

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Should I Put My Emergency Fund into a Roth IRA?

Today our Emergency Fund sits in a regular savings account earning a less than impressive 0.20% interest rate. This is a temporary solution as I look at the best way to give us easy access to our funds if we need them. The original plan was to place our Emergency Fund into the highest yielding [...]

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Who Can We Blame for Our Failure to Save?

I came across this chart from BillShrink.com while researching another article. It shows the personal savings rate trend by month from 1959 to 2009, along with an opposing trend of rising consumer debt. I find the information presented interesting, but what most fascinated me were some of the comments readers left that sought to justify the decline in [...]

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How much should I put in an Emergency Fund?

Most financial professionals agree that you should have an emergency fund. However, opinions on how much you should keep in that fund vary anywhere from $1000 to 12 months living expenses. So what is the right amount? What is an Emergency Fund? An emergency fund is a cash reserve that can be quickly accessed to [...]

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