Money Matters
blessed81
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Who does thiS??
How many people consider their credit cards as their emergency fund??
Re: Who does thiS??
We do however use credit cards when an emergency occurs. This way we have until a bill comes in to do our best to stop our current savings goal and pay the whole payment. This prevents us from taking any from the bank unless it is absolutely necessary. Fortunately our only emergencies have been vet bills and blown tires. We haven't been forced to touch the E-Fund since it was fully funded.
Love: March 2010 Marriage: July 2013 Debt Free: October 2014 TTC: May 2015
At a minimum, I would recommend finding a way to have at least $1,000 in a savings account.
We have a large E-fund in an online banking account, but if there is an "emergency" we will use the credit card to pay for it, then transfer the $ from our e-fund to cover it once the bills comes.
Not a credit card, but I sort of use my Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) as an E-fund. I do keep about $1,000 E-fund, outside of that. However, I currently have a balance on my HELOC, so I throw most of my disposable income onto that rather than save it for a larger E-fund.
Once that balance is paid off, then I'll look to throwing my disposable income to a larger E-fund.
We do, because we are working on getting out of debt. We are still renting, so we have an extra $2-4K/month to throw at debt. I figure we can cash flow almost anything during the month if an emergency came up, and our interest rate on debt is higher than what it would be in a savings account. Once we get consumer debt paid off, we will build up a larger emergency fund.
We have an E-fund separate from our CCs too. We are working to build it back up after buying a new Minivan in October.
We do put as much as possible on CCs to get the rewards, but we ALWAYS pay them off in full and on time each month. CCs are really only worth it IF you pay them off in full and on time, otherwise you get hit with high interest rates.
If things went kaput in our family and we needed access to large cash advances quickly that would exhaust the e-Fund then, yes we could tap into the CCs as a last resort sort of thing. We have access to about $40k on our combined CCs.
IF this happened, we'd probably take a loan from DH's parents, which we've done twice before (for "responsible" home-buying, home-related purchases), and pay off the high interest CCs and then pay back his parents over time more slowly. Caveat: I'm not generally a fan of family lending money to family. But, I also take it on a case-by-case basis.
Currently I'd consider our credit card our emergency fund. We have a decent amount in savings about $5K but I don't want to tap into it for small things. I will most likely put our new washer (if H can't fix ours) on our home depot credit card with 0% interest and pay it off well before the promotion period expires.
I'm working on getting away from credit cards completely, but I'm not as adverse to them as others on this board.
Edited to correct a spelling error.
MW and I both have car repairs that we need to get done sooner than later. My mom keeps telling me that we could always borrow money from them and pay them back, but I really don't want to do this since the last time that I had them bail me out it wasn't good which is why I ended up paying for my college by myself versus them helping me.
If we were to need a new appliance in an emergency situation (this has come up twice already), we would likely take advantage of the zero-interest financing available for them. We've done that before through Home Depot and paid it off before the zero-interest period was up - again, basically for breathing room and to keep our money working for us for longer.