How much do you have in savings

My savings account is about to hit a big (for me) milestone. Once I'm beyond that point, I'll be a little more comfortable with IRAs, money market accounts, etc. I've played around with them, but I think I'll be able to make more substantial contributions to them. 

I know I'm ahead of the curve for my age... but I'm way behind for most of my fellow engineers. But that's because I have fun

I feel so much better ... I actually have a (small) nest egg larger than that of most Americans'!

Especially since I live in a country where the living cost is 1/10 (approx.) that of the U.S., and because I haven't worked steadily in a year and a half ... however, living in Indonesia means I've been able to hugely stretch the savings I did/do have.

Probably a more useful metric is that a majority of Americans don't have two months' worth of their current living expenses in savings. That's scary. Not laying blame anywhere ... that's just scary.

Think, I'm in the higher end, though it looks like I am in the median here.

My SO and I aren't particularly good with savings. We don't have any special account or anything. In fact, we only have one account and everything we do comes out of that. RRSPs, mortgage, other bills get paid out of that and we put our pay cheques into it.

However, we both make decent money and don't have a lot of bills, so it grows faster than it depletes I guess. We pretty much buy what we want and don't budget too much. We usually have enough for at least 2 nice vacations/year, new bikes (though we get team deals and sell the old ones for about the same amout we pay for them) and various other stuff and have much more than $2000 in savings.

It's not likely that we'll both lose our jobs at the same time, so we don't worry too much. We could probably do a better job at savings and investing, but we do have monthly RRSPs (Canada's registered retirement saving plans) and we don't like to stress about money, so we mostly ignore it.

What counts as "savings"?

With stupidly low interest rates on pure "savings" accounts, I keep more in various types of short term investments, so that I gain a slightly higher interest rate than the pathetic 0.01% or whatever it currently is.

That is separate from my retirement savings ( 401k, whole life ) and from my "play" investments ( which I can stand to lose entirely ).

around negative thirty thousand and climbing.

hopefully this whole getting an education will do what everyone claims it will do.

Yeah, I consider "savings" things you can get to quickly and w/o great penalty (e.g. short term Money Market or CDs).  But stuff like 401K, IRA etc.. that's not savings IMO.

x2 for me...  I answered the poll including just our "cash" savings - bank and money market amounts - but we have much more non-retirement money in fairly liquid investments like high grade corporate and government bonds and some fixed income funds.

TriRSquared - 2012-01-23 12:37 PMI question the $200k+ response.  If you've got that much in "savings" you're doing a really poor job at making your money work for you

BTW I have not yet responded to the poll.

CDs are not liquid at all.  They have fixed maturity horizons with early withdrawal pentalites, the exact definition of NOT liquid.

TriRSquared - 2012-01-22 1:37 PM I question the $200k+ response.  If you've got that much in "savings" you're doing a really poor job at making your money work for you

ETF's....learn about them...and quick!

the bear - 2012-01-23 2:42 PM

TriRSquared - 2012-01-23 12:37 PMI question the $200k+ response.  If you've got that much in "savings" you're doing a really poor job at making your money work for you

Depends on how finely you're defining "savings." I do not have a designated "emergency fund" accountbut rather have brokerage accounts (apart from 401k accounts & IRAs) that are a mixture of cash, fixed income and equity investments. And it is working well for me.

BTW I have not yet responded to the poll.

Yes I do need to define it better...

What Bear said above.  They are very liquid.

TriRSquared - 2012-01-23 12:37 PM I question the $200k+ response.  If you've got that much in "savings" you're doing a really poor job at making your money work for you

 or they define savings differently than you do.