I’ve had an emergency fund since I started paying back my debt four years ago. At first, it was tiny, just $2,500. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get me through unexpected expenses like car repairs and emergency vet bills. It didn’t give me much coverage for larger emergencies, but it did its job until I became debt …
Crash Testing Your Finances
Common personal finance knowledge states that a typical emergency fund should contain three to six months of living expenses. This money helps cushion the blow of unfortunate events like job loss or having to replace a car. But it’s one thing to hoard a bunch of cash in a savings account, and another to know that exactly how far your …
Emergency Funds and Climate Change
On Friday morning my husband and I set out to head to my home town for a visit. This was the first time I’ve been home in a month and a half, and I was looking forward to it. I don’t know if you’ve been following east coast weather recently, but we’ve been battered with storm after storm resulting in …
2014: a Year in Review
Since it’s almost the end of the year I thought I’d take a moment to look at how I’ve done on my goals for 2014. This year was my most ambitious year yet in terms of goal setting. Overall I planned to save $23,000, and with some well timed tax returns and other windfall money, along with $7,500 in freelance …
Adjusting My Post-Emergency Fund Budget
Now that I’ve maxed out my emergency fund, I need to adjust my budget to absorb the cash that was being chucked into that account every month. In May’s budget, I scheduled $400 to go into our emergency fund. Now that it’s full, I need to reallocate that cash. Instead of just funnelling all of it into our travel fund …
Emergency Fund: Full
My emergency fund is done! It took me 20 weeks, but I managed to take my emergency fund from $2,610 to a fully completed level of $10,000. I completed this 2014 goal of mine on Friday after receiving some long awaited freelance income, as readers of this post know. This goal was almost as important to me as paying off …
So You Think You Don’t Need an Emergency Fund
As I’m nearing the $9,400 mark with my emergency fund, I have started to get more and more weird looks from family and friends. They think it’s really weird that I’m soon going to have $10,000 sitting in a bank account doing absolutely nothing. I get it, for the vast majority of the population, having an emergency fund of more …
My Emergency Fund is Almost Full!
Normally a post like this would be accompanied by a screenshot of my Mint.com account proudly declaring that my rebate was processed, but since ING Direct changed its name to Tangerine, Mint.com has decided it’s not going to load transactions from my accounts anymore. Get on this anytime Mint, I’d love to have my tracking software back please. So no …
A Tax Refund and Growing My Emergency Fund
My tax refund is here! Wahoo! This tax refund is not as impressive as the ones I’ve received in the past, because I’m sadly out of tuition tax credits this year. My days of mondo tax returns are over. (*tear). That said, I’m still super duper pumped to be getting a lump sum of cash deposited into my account! I …
How I Will Bank $23,000
*Throughout this post, when I say “my income”, I mean our income, as my husband and I have combined finances.* While 2013 was my year of paying off debt (actually it was more like my second year of paying off debt), 2014 is my year of saving. I’ve talked a bit about my savings goals in previous posts, but for …