There are situations that do come up in life that are unexpected in which you will need a saved up stash of money set aside to help you.
This is called an emergency fund. There are many situations in where you will need emergency funds such as
- Car breakdown
- Hospital bill due to bodily injury or sickness
- House repairs due to leak or repairs
- Unexpected travel due to family emergency
- Someone needed a loan to get them out of a jam
- Legal matters involving legal fees
- Getting let go from a job
There are many more examples but regardless of the reason if is always a good idea to have some funds set aside whether in another bank account or just tucking away cash.
It may be a challenge for some of us to keep emergency funds when living pay check to check believe me we at Circle Of Savings get it and are not rich by far. There are many ways you can start to save if you haven’t already. It is best to set a goal lets say $500 total in 6 months.
LET’S START HERE- GOAL
If you have $0 in savings right now it is best to look at what can be done to kickstart our emergency fund. I always tell myself what are my spending habits and what am I spending unnecessary money on? If I can let’s say for example make lunch or dinner every other day that money that is usually spent on take out can be put into savings. That can be about $50 a week or $200/month that adds up and can be put into a savings account. Or use a savings app such as Acorns where you can control how much money you can put into it from your spare change.
We did a review of a savings app called Acorns if you want to check it out. After scaling back on spending habits you can definitely put away $500 in at the most 6 months. Once you do this you can rinse and repeat but just be sure to not touch the money or withdraw from the account or stash. Here are some other ways you can start to save:
LOW RISK SAVINGS ACCOUNTS
- Money Market Accounts
- Savings Accounts
- Checking Accounts
SAVINGS APPS
- Acorns
- Qapital
- Stash
- Robinhood
MOBILE BANKS For Quick ACCESS
- Chime
- Capital One
- TD Bank
- Varo
Think about using a combination of banks and apps to save. See which one is yielding the most return on investment and use that one the most to move money into. Also, if you feel like you can put more than $200/month away then bump up your goal for the next 6 months to $1000 total. In no time you will have enough in your emergency fund where you should have no worries if a tragedy happens.
NOW THAT YOU HAVE YOUR EMERGENCY FUND…WHAT TO DO?
Let is sit there and build. If you have money in a savings account with decent interest 5ates then keep it there. Savings accounts such as Chime, Synchrony Bank and HSBC offers no minimums and monthly fees. One last tip to remember is that credit cards should be used as a last resort because of their higher interest rates and fees when withdrawing money. But if you do happen to need to use a credit care just pay off the balance down fast as the higher the balance the more interest you have to pay monthly.
