Saving goal advice needed

[clickerish]

Is it even rational to save money while in graduate school?

I have no student loans or cc debt. I work to pay for my tuition, put money into my IRA (Roth) at the end of the year. I have a car that's paid off and a repair fund of about 300/year since I drive rarely due to having access to the bus.

What I don't have now that I am not employed at a "normal" job is an emergency fund that would cover me over 1 month. I also am not currently contributing to retirement funds beyond the Roth. I feel very very odd about this since I used to contribute to my 401k when I worked, and I had the recommended 6 month savings.

Should I be worried? Most of my colleagues are in worse situations, but I don't think I should measure my progress against theirs since they are also not financially intelligent most of the time.

[gt7301b]

Do you have extra cash to start an e-fund? If you fon't I wouldn't worry too much, you can always pull your contributions out without penalty . I am assuming you will make more money soon and can catch up. If you plan to be in school for 10 more years I might start to worry.

[wino55]

It seems like a $1000 emergency savings fund would be helpful, but is more than that really necessary? When I was in grad school we were in a similar situation to you in that I wasn't taking out student loans, but we had in the back of our minds that if DH were to lose his job unexpectedly, I could always get student loans to cover us. I think it's great you are still contributing to retirement and I would not cut that back unless you have a reason to think you are likely to lose your job.

[Deleted]

Is it rational? It depends. Is your current budget really tight? How much emergency fund do you have? How much longer until your done with grad school?