It made me

How I did it: I started working a full time job about 5 months ago and every time I got paid I had a certain percentage deducted into a separate savings acct with another banking institution. If I ever had a few dollars to spare I would add it to the acct. I recently received my tax refund and put the remaining chunk to reach $2000 in my savings acct!!! So happy!! Now on to saving for other goals! Read how I did it… 2 months ago

It made me

feel safe.

How I did it: I've always been a pretty good saver even as a kid.  I went to college for a very long time, which didn't leave me much to save.  I opened a savings account with ING two years ago and stocked something into it when ever I had extra money.   The emergency fund has been great help many times when I got in a jam (i.e. dryer caught fire).  But I wasn't able to build much before it was wiped out again until I finally graduated.   Unfortunately the first place I took a job at ended up in a royal brawl with one of their largest clients right after I started.  Knowing if they didn't work things out my job would be on the line, I made sure to stock as much away as possible into an emergency fund. Hours quickly dried up, but I was able to make it by being really flexible with my schedule and volunteering to work out of town.  In the end, work gave me a choice leave the company or transfer to a city 4 hours away.  As luck would have I already interviewing elsewhere and another company offered me a job 2 days later.  Since the original job paid me severance, my emergency fund went untouched .  I'm still adding to it and hope someday to get up to $20,000, which would be a year of expenses for me minus debts (I'm saving a year of debt payments in another account).  Read how I did it… 9 months ago