have an emergency fund

I have been thinking about metrics for my emergency fund. Is the emergency fund is essentially about sustaining a lifestyle when cut off from income, or is it for funding unforeseen expenditures? If it’s the one, I need to cast my goals in terms of regular expenses, if the other I need to think about large expenses that I might have.

This morning I went to have a savings plan added to my bank account. This will be the actual emergency fund, so that it will be easy to keep track of the amount of money in the emergency fund.

Now that I have a bank account, I suppose I will have to start putting some money in it. Time to figure out if I should start with a lump sum, or with monthly payments, or what. What makes it difficult is that don’t have a budgeting process.

Today I opened the bank account for my emergency fund.

It has been nice to deal with a new bank, and it’s also good because it is a locally controlled bank.

I plan to open a new bank account tomorrow. It’s not something I do often, so it should be interesting.

In doing my research about this I wondered about the kind of account I should have. Should I just keep the money in one of my other accounts and earmark it? Or should I get a new bank account?

In the process I discovered exactly the amount of money I’ve been paying in banking fees, and it’s a scary amount. I believe I will rather get an account at a new bank with lower fees than carry on with a traditional bank.

Earlier this year I had to replace my laptop at short notice. I was lucky enough to have the money, but fairly upset that I had to use it. If I had put away the money beforehand it would not have hurt as much.