Emergency Savings - Being Fit In Not So Financially Fit Times

[BlessedHappiness]

Hi everybody,

The CEO of my firm said something that kinda hit the nail on the head for me during our recent quarterly earnings report. He said, "we are going to continue to build a fortress balance sheet so that we can control our destiny, not others controlling it for us" In the short of it - maximize reserves. This resonated with me because I feel that on our journey to financial success and overall credit health, it is also an important piece of the puzzle to maintaing and building stellar credit so when those moments in life crop up, instead of bankrupting us and throwing all of our hard work to improve our credit scores in the tank, it saves us.

So, I thought it would be fun to see what tips everyone has for building that all important rainy day/save our life fund. We can encourage one another and see what works and what doesn't work. We should also list our goals and check back in to help us stay on track. It's pretty hard I find to save sometimes in an economy like the one we've had, but, never the less important.

I'll start off:

2013 Goal: 70/20/10 Rule
Live off of 70%, Save 20% (combo retirement and emergency/long term savings target), and contribute 10% to debt repayment.

How do I plan to get there: Automatic Deposits into separate accounts for each target every pay period. Once I get enough in the debt repayment account to PFD a collection account/reduce utilization I will direct those funds to that.

Where am I at now:

Age: 39

Ficos: On the mend

Gaining knowledge from forum to have the best fortress balance sheet for my circumstances.

Salary: $50,000 +

Emergency Savings: $0 - Well, I'm starting now so I'll be better this year. 15% will go to long term, 5% to 401k with a dollar-for-dollar company match. Will add bonus/refund to this total.

401k/Pension: $14,000 (could be better - I didn't contribute the past couple years, and took some out - turned down the free $$$ company match. Oh well, i'll make sure to get it now).

I added it to rebuilding credit forum because I think it will help. I could definitely use the advice.

Thanks for your feedback:

[BlessedHappiness]

bump

[Anonymous]

I like your plan and it seems well thought out and something that should work for you. Personally I would focus on an emergency savings fund first before attacking old debts. I did not do that when I started rebuilding and wish I would have. I put every penny I had towards paying off debts and all was going well until I had an unexpected issue with my truck that I use to get to work every day. The problem was that I had zero cash to fix it because I had been attacking all of my debts so hard. If I would have started off by getting $1000.00 into an emergency savings fund I would have been in much better shape, it would not have covered all of the repairs but it would have helped out big time.