How much do you have saved up? Me, I’m better than about 3 months—especially because we’ve seriously cut back on discretionary spending with my job loss.
According to Christian Personal Finance, the size of emergency funds is increasing:
I was just reading an article in Money magazine based off a poll asking their readers how much they had in emergency savings. It didn’t seem to be a very “scientific” poll, but I was very surprised by the results.
According to their survey, 37% of the responses indicated they had more than 6 months of expenses in an emergency fund! Another 19% had 3-6 months, 22% had less than 3 months, and another 22% had none.
So, how about you? Do you have a lot saved? a little? none?
You should save at least 6 months as an emergency fund. One thing is that really any saving can serve as an emergency fund so what amount of emergency fund you have is largely just a matter of your total saving and what you decide to call your emergency fund.
But if you don’t have 6 months of expenses in saving or CD’s… you should work on building that up. And saving more is even better.