Comments on: Reader Poll – Just How Much Is 6 Months Worth Of Expenses?

By: Kate Kashman

Kate Kashman — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:14:06 +0000

Question 1: Where do you keep you emergency fund? In a savings account, money market, checking account, or under the mattress?

In a money market account at my credit union. When it is full, I move some to CDs.

Question 2: What about six months worth of expenses? Is this too much… or too little?

Ideally, 6 months would be great. We have outstanding job security so we could probably get by with less as our primary breadwinner can not lose his job without about a year’s advance notice.

Question 3: Would you sacrifice a fully-funded emergency fund in order to fully-fund a Roth IRA (or other retirement / education savings account)? We have chosen to fund IRAs and other retirement savings while maintaining a small emergency fund. It is not fully funded.

Question 4: What is the smallest emergency fund with which you wold be comfortable? $2500

By: Holland

Holland — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:57:09 +0000

We keep our emergency fund in a HSBC online savings account. Right now we have a baby emergency fund of $3k, and even if I was to loose my job we could cover all our minimun monthly expenses with my husband’s income. We have zero credit card debt, no car loans, but a big amount of student loans. We are focusing all our efforts to pay off one student loan at a time. After these student loans are all paid off we’ll focus our energy on saving up an emergency fund to cover 6 months of expenses.

By: Deborah

Deborah — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:34:26 +0000

We keep our emergency fund in an online, high yield savings account. We don’t have 6 months of expenses saved up – more like 3 – but now that all of our vehicles (car, ex’s car and motorcycle) are paid off, we’re socking money into that account as fast as we can.

Our monthly expenses are $2,350 – but more than 25% of that is child support for my stepson. That’s our biggest monthly expense, and the only one we wouldn’t be able to put off paying for 30 days if we needed to. Other than that, my background in the service industry means that I may have to get a job waiting tables again – but I wouldn’t let myself go more than 30 days without being unemployed. It wouldn’t be my first choice – or even my 50th – but Waffle House and IHOP are always hiring.

By: tiffanie

tiffanie — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:19:41 +0000

My goal right now is for a $10,000 emergency fund, but I’ve put it on hold since I met my mini goal of $1500. I keep my money in an HSBC high yield savings online (3.5% as of right now).

By: Frugal Babe

Frugal Babe — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:28:20 +0000

We keep our emergency fund in an online savings account
Six months worth of expenses is a great goal – we’re working on it, very slowly!
We have made the emergency fund a lower priority than our IRAs and our HSA. The HSA is sort of an emergency fund already, since that is how we would deal with any medical emergency that required meeting our health insurance deductible.
We’re putting $100/month into our emergency fund. We have $1700 in it right now, although $5000 is really the minimum that I’d need in order to feel comfortable. We keep plugging away at it, but we’re also maxxing out our HSA and our IRAs this year, saving for our son’s education and solar panels for our house, and working to pay off our mortgage as fast as we can. But it’s gratifying to see the balance in the emergency fund going up each month.