S/O How much is in your efund?

[5thofjuly]

We have 8 months of spending currently in savings, I'm about to transfer a big chunk to our broker, though, so we'll soon only have 3 months of savings (with room for some extras, not just bare bones and if we both suddenly become unemployed or 6 months bare bones) on hand.

That said, we can easily live on one salary and both have jobs in very secure fields. If that wasn't the case I'd want 6 months on hand in our savings account.

[SJ]

V you are not missing anything. It simply comes down to personal comfort level, risk tolerance, and understanding of investments. There is no "right answer."

I agree with the point that if something so drastic happened that every single investment in a large, well-balanced, diversified portfolio was inaccessible or worth zero at the same time, we would have far larger issues to worry about.

Also I'm not sure where this notion of 2-3 weeks to access investments comes from. Trades settle within three business days and then you can get a same-day wire. So you just need a 3 day buffer for the ransom. Same as cash at ING.

Every other scenario I can think of could be put on a credit card or would have enough warning to move things around.

There are two conversations going on here which can lead to confusion:

1) I have no taxable savings-how much should I have?

2) I have plenty of taxable savings- how much should literally sit in cash?

[sillygoosegirl]

Ours is combined e-fund and house fund. Currently, we could live on it for like 3-4 years. But we'll be spending 2 years worth on our down payment on the 27th (yay!). It'll be interesting to see how long the rest lasts... the house wants a lot of work. The *plan* is to hold 6 months in reserve.

[Deleted]

Our problem is that DH works in a field that is closely tied to the stock market. It would majorily suck to experience another big crash (something along the lines of 2008 for example), have him get laid off, and then lose all or most of our "emergency" $$ on top of that too. I think that a lot of people on here are assuming that their investments will remain stable in the event of some emergency in their lives. But as many people learned just 4-5 years ago, that is not always the case.

Plus in our situation, I've been a SAHM for the past couple of years and I worked in a low paying industry before that. So it's not like I can immediately go out and get a well paid job. It would definitely take time, especially if we're in another recession with tons of people getting laid off again.

My personal opinion is that you shouldn't risk money that you can't afford to lose. We do invest a decent amount. But we keep a nice chunk in cash too in case the worst happens. Better safe than sorry.

[waytoomuch]

We are not the norm. We have about $185k in liquid cash and then a lot more in the stock market that we could access if needed. We fully fund our retirement accounts too. We don't want to put the cash in the stock market because our life is in limbo and we don't know if we want to buy a house or continue renting. Renting definitely has its perks and has allowed us to save a substantial amount of money and avoid the hassle of broken/repair work, property taxes and large insurance fees vs rental insurance fees, etc. Having such a large security net for so long now, I don't think we would ever want to have less than $50k in liquid cash, but that's us and we are not the norm amongst our friends, etc.

[magdala9]

We have 9 mos of routine living expenses in it right now. I usually have more but we had some bills come due right at the holidays and had to dip into it a little.

[flatlan]

We have $15,000 which is 3 months of comfortable living. We could stretch that further if we had to. DH and I both have very stable jobs and we are comfortable with this number. We also keep $2000 in cash in our safe for true "emergencies"

[belovedbride07]

We have 6 months' expenses in our efund.

We have another 4 months' worth in our down payment fund.

I expect we might blur these lines when we actually buy a house; I'm not sure if we really need 6 months in our efund long term.

[audette]

I've mentioned before that it's probably time to consult a pofessional about how to manage our funds.

Our "savings" is over $60k.

We have well more than double that in various non-retirement mutual fund investments. These have fairly quick access (if I remember correctly it's 3-4 days access timeframe). By that understanding, I see all of it as accessible for most emergencies.

Do we have too much in savings? Probably. Do I know what we should do instead? Not really. We direct funds twice a month into our investment accounts and into our savings.

So, um, yeah. We probably need to figure out the next step soon.

[tarianne]

We have about $15k immediately accessible through our checking/savings then another 24 months of normal expenses covered in our non retirement investment account.

The way we figure it, the only reason you would need more than $10k immediately would be for a ransom.

[Deleted]

We keep very little in actual cash, but we also have virtually no bills right now - most are paid by H's company as part of our expat package (rent, utilities, health insurance). We also have no debt, so we don't need to incorporate any other payments into our efund. We would consider a huge emergency to be that H would be laid off and we would have to return to the U.S. immediately, but H's company would have to fly us back and pay moving expenses. And we could live with H's parents or my parents for some time rent free.
Our efund currently is held in CD's that had very small penalties for early withdrawal, iBonds, and a little in savings. We have a lot of other money in general savings that we could access fairly quickly if need be.

[FishChicks]

Right now we have a bit over one year of my salary in a high interest savings account. Two reasons for that: 1) layoffs are coming to my department soon, and to stay in my industry, I would likely have to move to another state for a new job. DH owns a company and couldn't move, so we'd have a mortgage and rent. 2) if I survive the layoffs, 2013 will be the year we remodel our master bath. It's awesome and retro right now, but the shower/tub in unusable, and after three years in the house, I'm ready to have two working showers!

[RandZB]

We are rebuilding ours after dealing with my DH being unemployed for five months. We had around $7k in savings when he lost his job, and were down to about $1500 when he found a new job in November. We're currently at just over $5k thanks to a portion of my bonus, but I won't be comfortable until we reach $10k again.