Financial emergency!

I think it's important to have a cash reserve of at least a few months of pay.  We keep ours in a money market account so it continues to grow, but is readily available if needed. 

Hmmm.... I think doing the survey as  "months of income" rather than absolute dollars may have been more informative.  It would give a better indication of a person's propensity for saving.

I agree completely - ours is just in a high yield savings account, but same principle. It's fewer than 24 hours away if we need it.

And these days "high yield" means 1%, right?

??M??y savings account has something stupid like 0.5% interest right now...so sad.?

haha yes, unfortunately! When I switched it over to the high yield account I was earning 0.22% with my bank and moved into over 4% with the new account. I haven't checked the rate in probably a year (because let's face it, it's not gonna make me rich either way) but last I saw it was like 1.47% or somewhere around there.

1% is much higher than the negative 10% of an index fund!!!

You're max of $10k is pretty low. Not sure what kind of meaningful data you're going to get by setting up the poll like that.

My wife and I are rebuilding our saving after having recently had a large out of pocket unexpected expenditure (not an emergency but something we had to deal with quickly) so it is still small but we put 10-15% of our income into a good savings account every month and when it gets big enough we roll it over into a high yield account (I think our bank has a $10k minimum for these accounts.

8 months of mandatory expenses.

Is my minature pet giraffe involved in said emergency?

"Opulence....I has it."

My savings account makes 0.5%.  It's criminal.

Cash! $400. That's it. It's been a rough year.

*like*

No.  He is Brian.

We went with ~6 months of expenses in a money market account.  Not much return on that the last few years, but it's liquid.

We have a very solid reserve with a few months of expenses in a money market fund at our credit union and the bulk in very liquid bond funds.  

Okay list ten "emergencies" other than medical procedures and job losses that cost more than $10,000 to clear up. A new HVAC system is probably between $5,000-10,000, other than that I really can't think of any major expenses that could come up that weren't either covered by auto or homeowner's insurance, or aren't really emergencies requiring immediate attention.

True story =)

According to D.R. you should:

1.  Save $1000. 
2.  Then pay off all debt but mortgage. 
3.  Then save 3 to 6 months expenses.

There are more after, but outside the scope of this thread.  I think its a pretty solid plan, although I'm not there yet.  Done with 1, working on 2.   Almost there!

The last time we had a financial emergency, the wife couldnt comprehend how I covered it with a two small (1oz) bars of platinum I pulled from my secret hiding spot.  They had picked up much better than 1-4% too.  Nor could she comprehend my classification of them being "liquid."

I'm right there with ya!

Any of you $10k'ers wanna make a donation to your fellow BT'ers?


@Brian: My rents just had to replace their HVAC system. $14k total! Ouch!!!

Okay, now you have a poorly worded as well as poorly designed survey. Seriously, what information are you trying to get from this survey? Notice how the majority of respondents are clustered in the >$10K response.

Not ten but one that happens with all too often: losing your job. Unless you figure that $10K is 3-6 months salary, it's way too low of a limit. Remembering that per the USAT the median income of traiathletes is $126K.

We have two months worth of emergency cash in savings. "High yield" my arse. We also work in an environment where we will both immediately have a job should we lose our current jobs, so we're quite lucky in that sense.