Actual E-fund

[simpsongal]

We keep very little in liquid savings, about $10K, just enough to cover unexpected major expenses (e.g., HVAC issues, major car repairs).

Our jobs are very stable (I'm a long tenured fed) and we have lots in stock. We figure if there were a major life event necessitating cash we'd liquidate stock. We also have the HELOC available to us too.

[melmel48]

Nov 9, 2021 12:55:14 GMT -5 twinmomma said:

Nov 9, 2021 11:30:26 GMT -5 melmel48 said:

1.5 so I voted 1. I am single, with the highest salary I have ever had... and it is still a struggle sometimes.

Solidarity. Single mom who pays all the bills over here. I have about 2 months in a regular savings account and it took me a really long time to get there. 

I hate taking $$$ out of savings because it takes me so long to replace it. I know an E-fund is there for emergencies, but I worked so hard to get even just 1.5 months of savings. I recently broke my toe; I have shitty health insurance and I am trying to cash flow the medical bills I am getting, but I am going to have to dip into savings. It hurts! 

[midwestmama]

It depends on if we both lost our jobs or just one of us. If we both lost our jobs, then I would say we have about 3 months. If one of us lost our jobs, it would be closer to 6 months. We also have cash in another account we could use if need be, although it isn't earmarked as e-funds.

[twinmomma]

Nov 10, 2021 10:31:04 GMT -5 melmel48 said:

Nov 9, 2021 12:55:14 GMT -5 twinmomma said:

Solidarity. Single mom who pays all the bills over here. I have about 2 months in a regular savings account and it took me a really long time to get there. 

I hate taking $$$ out of savings because it takes me so long to replace it. I know an E-fund is there for emergencies, but I worked so hard to get even just 1.5 months of savings. I recently broke my toe; I have shitty health insurance and I am trying to cash flow the medical bills I am getting, but I am going to have to dip into savings. It hurts! 

I totally get it! My fridge is on its last leg and I'm dreading dipping into the savings account to replace it. 

[Deleted]

So I have like 1 grand in a savings account attached to my bank account. Everything else is in investments and settlement funds. My settlement funds equal out to like 2 or 3 months of expenses right now. I do not have cash just sitting in a savings account identified as an e fund. I only got to this point due to an inheritance. Before it was like 3-5 grand and it was rough building that up.

[melmel48]

Nov 10, 2021 10:50:25 GMT -5 twinmomma said:

Nov 10, 2021 10:31:04 GMT -5 melmel48 said:

I hate taking $$$ out of savings because it takes me so long to replace it. I know an E-fund is there for emergencies, but I worked so hard to get even just 1.5 months of savings. I recently broke my toe; I have shitty health insurance and I am trying to cash flow the medical bills I am getting, but I am going to have to dip into savings. It hurts! 

I totally get it! My fridge is on its last leg and I'm dreading dipping into the savings account to replace it. 

I just ordered a new fridge ( need to buy a range too. UGH) I was SO excited when they said I don't have to pay for it until it comes in. That will be in January. Gives me time to save for at least some of it. Bad timing though; right at the holidays.

[egeiger]

I could pull 6 months of income in cash for an emergency.
Reality is, we have a high enough credit line, that I feel like I could use that as well.

[ellipses84]

I typically keep my savings account pretty low and we’ll use it for atypical expenses that I know will come up occasionally like a car repair, medical bill or new appliance. I have another account I’d consider our e-fund that has a couple months savings at most, but I’d never keep more than that and I try not to touch it. I’d rather have my money in higher interest investments or paying off interest rate debt (even low student loans).

DH and I were laid off at the same time in 2013 (first time in either of our lives), have dealt with $$$ emergencies and I was laid off/ he was furloughed during Covid lockdown. In reality we have a large credit line and have used that temporarily until we could free up investment income to get us through those times. I know not everyone is comfortable with that but knowing it has worked out in the past makes me ok with it.

[k3am]

We don't have a dedicated efund. We have a few cash savings accounts for near term items (vacation, taxes, home improvement, etc) that we can pull from as necessary, and the rest is in a brokerage account. A dedicated e-fund doesn't make sense for us and the way we manage our money.


www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/is-your-emergency-fund-too-big

[mlkgls]

I keep about 4-5 months in what I would consider my Efund, however I have a large sinking fund earmarked for a future car purchase which I would likely use first. I have a bad habit of being really, really reluctant to spend money once it’s been allocated to savings.

[lust2hart]

We have about 4 months of expenses in a dedicated e-fund, and another 5 or so months of expenses in an HSA that we would use for a medical emergency (but we also use the HSA for bigger regular medical expenses as well).

[aprilsails]

If I lost my job today I could walk into a competitors office tomorrow and start immediately. My industry has been in a state of crisis with a workers shortage for my entire 14 year career.

I have three months of my share of expenses in cash in my chequing account, but that’s mostly to ensure I don’t have to pay banking fees. DH probably has about 5 months worth of his expenses in his account since he usually has more than I do.

@@@ We both have high salaries and haven’t overextended ourselves. We can go indefinitely on one of our two salaries, and have had to do so through a few of DHs periods of unemployment and my two maternity leaves. We can still save if we are still receiving unemployment. As a result an emergency fund is not a critical part of our planning.

[expectantsteelerfan]

This is something dh and I disagree greatly on. We have about 8 months to a year of money in a savings account (calculated by amount needed to cover expenditures, not by income). Dh wants to keep more or have a separate account designated for upcoming large expenditures (such as the fact that we'll likely need a new roof in the next year or two) whereas I would use the money from the efund for that and then replenish. But dh also wants to be more aggressive with our retirement because we were late to start contributing meaningfully, and we are a single-income family.

Dh has great job security, but if he were to loose his job, I can't think of a situation where it would happen and we would be able to keep our house, we would need to downsize and bring our expenditures down. So I don't think it makes sense to keep as much as we currently have just in savings.

[lemoncupcake]

In our bank savings account we have 3 months expenses - that's the true "emergency" fund that we don't have any intentions to use. We both work and earn roughly the same amount, so assuming that only one of us lost our job that stretches to 6 months to make us whole.

At any other point in time we have another 24-ish months worth of money, either in cash or invested. But we would never need it all immediately so could move things around or sell if needed.

[waverly]

We don’t do e-fund that way and DH has been through several job losses.

We also don’t really consider that I willl lose my job also since it is extremely stable. I know that wasn’t the response you were looking for in terms of helpfulness for you.

We have an amount in savings. It doesn’t correlate to exact months without income. With my income, plus unemployment plus decreasing expenses we are able to stretch it more than our expenses times X.

Counting months didn’t really work for us because it’s very fluid. Maybe a set amount works better for us.

ETA- DH has also been lucky to get severance in several situations. And we were in the past able to dramatically cut back on expenses. I need to look at our overall accessible cash but now that I think of it- it is very high because we have set it aside for our bathroom addition but the bathroom addition has been delayed due to supply chain.

[wanderingback]

We have about $17,000 in easily accessible cash which covers approximately 4 months of the rent & mortgage.

Last year when covid hit my partner immediately lost all his work. Plus I was making about 3 times less than I make right now, my salary didn’t quite cover rent & mortgage. So now that things have improved we decided we’d always have 3-4 months of rent & mortgage saved in case something catastrophic happened again because that was the biggest stressor last year worrying about having a roof over our heads in 2 different cities.

Now the main focus is on paying off some credit card debt and my $350,000+ in student loans. The reality is even if I lost my current full time job I also have 4 or so other per diem jobs that I could work in a full time capacity and finding a new full time job wouldn’t be hard.

[awkwardpenguin]

We don't really do an "e-fund" in the traditional sense of "X months of expenses sitting in a dedicated account". Cash is part of our overall asset allocation, which breaks down to 50% domestic equities, 20% international equities, and 30% bonds and cash combined. Our income is uneven and I SAH, so when we get a chunk of income we top up the cash account and then spend it down as planned until the next chunk of income. So right now our total cash is about 3.5 months of expenses and a very low percentage of our overall AA, but that's as low as it gets.

[lolalolalola]

None. We can access investments and a line of credit in case of an emergency.

[k3am]

www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/reasons-dont-have-emergency-fund-2021-11?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab

This came up in my feed and is timely/relevant.

[goldengirlz]

Nov 14, 2021 18:44:19 GMT -5 k3am said:

www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/reasons-dont-have-emergency-fund-2021-11?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab

This came up in my feed and is timely/relevant.

I think this article makes sense for people with a solid financial situation. But one thing she doesn’t mention is that the market is volatile. Imagine losing your job in March 2020 when the stock market was crashing. Sure, you could cash out investments, but you might be selling at a loss (depending on when you started investing.) I would never recommend someone stick all their money in the market if they didn’t have the writer’s benefits of “multiple income streams” and “ample assets outside of retirement.”

(I’m not saying you were saying that, just that I think it’s a glaring omission.)

[k3am]

I think there are so many people that are a spot in life where an emergency bill like a new water heater or routine repair can make or break their financial position and that an emergency fund is a life saver for… but there are also a lot of people that are relatively well off/high enough earners with enough assets (perhaps not liquid) that the notion of keeping 6 months of expenses in liquid assists is a actually disservice.

The point is.. 6 months is an entirely arbitrary number and leaves all the individual nuances out.

[pandora89]

We have 9 months of cash that isn’t tied up in anything at the moment which I guess we would consider an e-fund although it is likely we will be moving it to our investment portfolio.

I don’t work right now and DH runs his own business so we don’t really have the worry about him losing his job. His line of business is one that is considered to be recession proof/an essential business. He also takes a salary from his business but he has a significant amount of cash flow available to him via his net profits in his business account we can lean on if worse comes to worse, along with sell all the assets of his company.