I'm Changing the Way I Save

If I believe anything about personal finance is that it is an ever-changing endeavor. I like to set things and then forget about them, but every once in a while I realize something isn't working. Since I have started my emergency fund I've had a hard time keeping the money in there. Something always comes up and I end up taking a little bit out to pay off one thing or another. The problem is that majority of reasons I'm pulling out money are not emergency related. I realized there has got to be a better way to save.

When the husband and I got married we opened a joint savings account. We both fund this every month and we have slowly seen the amount increase. In fact, this month we decided to raise the amount we each put into the savings account and decided that half of our tax return money will immediately go into this account. Even though we are diligently putting money into this account every month we haven't really decided what this money will be used for. I like to think of it as our down payment or other big life changing endeavor fund. What I do know is that it I did not want to use it as an emergency fund.

So the husband and I decided to sit down and crunch some numbers. Now that there are two of us the likelihood of both of us losing our jobs at the same time is low, especially because of the nature of my husband's job. So instead of adding up 6 months of what we need to survive if we both lost our jobs. We looked at what we would need if one of us lost our jobs, took the higher number and multiplied that number by 6. We ended up with a reasonable number that we were both confident would be enough to help us get through 6 months of unemployment that wouldn't be overwhelming to fund.

The husband had more savings put away than I did, so he was able to fund his half immediately. My savings tracker on the right shows what I have left to fund. I'm much more careful with shared money than I am with my own, so I know that after I finish funding my half it will not be touched unless there is an actual emergency. For once in my life I will have a real emergency fund!

I'm now trying to build up a slush fund of personal savings to help with overages in my budget. While most of our accounts are with ING, I decided that this slush fund should be attached to my checking account. My goal is to build it up to $1000 and then focus on either retirement or travel savings. Once I have an emergency fund completely set up the saving possibilities are endless!

I know, only a complete personal finance geek would get excited about savings. I'm happy to call myself one!

photo by 401K