Do you have an emergency fund??

[DawnM]

We have 6 months in cash in our savings account. We have access to another 6 months min. in places like a ROTH IRA that we could access if absolutely necessary.

We really want to get 12 months of living expenses in our savings (money market), but things keep coming up and we haven't gotten there yet.

Dawn

 

[livie1205]

Seriously, there is no need for this crap. Until you walked a mile in her shoes and know what it is going on with her SDD then there is no need for the name calling. Her SDD could very well be a brat now, spoiled by her step-father and expecting the same from her father.

Now back to the OP: Yes, I do have an EF. It is not that large right now since I have had to dip into it since DH passed away. But I hope to have it back up in the next few weeks. I want at least 6-9 months in it.

No seriosly she is WRONG!!! I do not care what she thinks about the child to go on to a public forum and talk trash about a CHILD is low! She married a man who had a child and it does not matter what the childs step parent makes its HIS CHILD TO TAKE CARE OF.mY EX IS 10,000 BEHIND in CS and he will have to go to court for it.<t dh makes decent money but it does not matter he takes care of HIS child and my child.
MY kids can act out every so often but I would never go on a forum and just say hey they are BRATS!! By her saying that she is showing ZERO respect for her dh.If the child seems selfish then all kids get that way...they do not always understand what parents do for them.

 

[Kickapoo Joie Juice]

Cars should be quite capable of lasting 200K miles, if you change the oil and keep up on routine maintenance. DD's car is a 97 Ford Taurus, and we expect it to last her through at least the 4 years of undergrad college, and hopefully into grad school. We've got a 84 pick up that's going strong with 250K on it.

I agree, I'm meticulous to the point of anal retentive when it comes to car maintenance. I just spent 600 to have the oil pan and gasket replaced on the MPV, and four new michelins.

However, the transmission (which has always been an issue with the 03 mpv's), is slipping more often despite having been reflashed twice under warranty.

Since most car gurus say the time to get rid of the car is when a repair would be 50% of the value of the car, at this point a new transmission for the mpv would be about 2-3k and the value of the car at trade in is 4k, 6k retail value, we would sell it rather than have the transmission repaired.

But, the transmission right now, while occasionally annoying (shift shock between 2nd and 3rd gear every now and then), does not present a safety or reliability issue so I'll keep driving it.

It looks like new, though, I wash it a lot and I'm constantly vacuuming it, and the seats are always covered, and the covers get washed all the time. I also have a No Diapers No Dairy policy, which has kept the minivan in remarkably good shape

I think that's another secret to wealth: taking care of what you have and trying not to wear it out so it lasts longer so you don't have to buy another one for a long time.

Learning not to get sick of things is another skill I think is helpful (and one I haven't entirely mastered yet)

DH says that our emergency fund is more like 3 months if you factor in cobra. Bummer. I guess that means a new car is farther away than I thought.

I'm looking at the idea of buying catastrophic-only insurance with very high deductibles and basically being self-insured vs. going on cobra with unemployment, I think that might be a better option, since the emergency fund would take care of things like a broken tooth, but the catastrophic insurance would be in place for a (statistically unlikely) bad accident or illness.

Not that we're planning on being unemployed, but I find this a smart exercise.

 

[Schmoodle]

What we've got in our liquid emergency fund right now is about 3 mos living expenses (if we cut all the fat). We don't carry cc debt, right now just mortgage. But we also have an emergency plan - DH and I both work and make about the same amount of money. We've always kept our living expenses within one income, so if something happened to one of us or to one of our jobs, we'd be able to get by on one income. I carry the health insurance for now, but we could switch over to his plan if needed.

 

[Took]

What we've got in our liquid emergency fund right now is about 3 mos living expenses (if we cut all the fat). We don't carry cc debt, right now just mortgage. But we also have an emergency plan - DH and I both work and make about the same amount of money. We've always kept our living expenses within one income, so if something happened to one of us or to one of our jobs, we'd be able to get by on one income. I carry the health insurance for now, but we could switch over to his plan if needed.

This is close to our situation. DH and I have very stable (and portable) jobs which we unlikely to lose at any point in the near future. We also make similar salaries. However, we do keep about 3 months salary in savings (at current spending, which we could reduce), and we have almost no debt (only home mortgage of 4 1/2% fixed rate, which will be paid off in another 71/2 years). We also could liquidate some stock, IRA's, CD's, etc. if needed. We HOPE our plans will be enough to survive the current climate.

took

 

[casper_jj11]

Our "emergency fund" is enough to cover 24 months worth of mortgage/car insurance/car payment/utilities/food.

OMG! Really??? That's 100K in my world not even including food (just mortgage, car insurance and utilities). We have money in RRSPs (retirement fund in Canada... kind of like 401s I think) but that's about it. We're working on paying off our line of credit bit by bit but holy cow, I'm working on getting an EF in place once the line of credit is paid but wow! I'm sure we couldnt' come close to 24months.