It’s no surprise that having an emergency fund is one of the most important things you can do to help your finances. I’ll go over some strategies and show you a painless way to create an emergency fund so you can begin to breathe easier at night.
- Start with a small amount. It doesn’t have to be a large amount of money to make an impact. If you are only able to save $10 per week that would amount to $520 a year. Your account will grow larger each month and motivate you to save more.
- Have the money come out of your paycheck automatically. You won’t miss the small amounts, but your savings will thank you for it. Trust me…it really does work! 🙂
- If you decide against having the money deducted from your paycheck, list the amount as a bill in your budget. Pay yourself first!
- If you are able to save money on an existing bill, add the amount you saved to the amount you put into your savings account. Example: You are currently saving $40 per month and you find a way to save $10 per month on your cable bill. Now you can put $50 per month into your savings. Don’t spend the money you find…put it into your savings account immediately!
- If you finish paying a debt off, put the amount you were paying to the creditor in your savings account.
- When creating your budget, over budget the amounts you think you’ll need so you will have money left over at the end of the month. Put that extra money into your savings account.
- If you come into any extra money like a bonus or tax refund, put it into your savings account.
- Save your spare change throughout the year. At the end of the year, you will be very surprised to see how much you saved. Guess what I’m going to suggest you do with the money? 🙂
- Look into refinancing your mortgage or auto loan to see if it will save you money each month. If so, the monthly savings goes into the savings account.
These are just a few ideas to get you thinking differently about ways you can create an emergency fund. If you haven’t begun saving yet, try starting tomorrow with a small amount and go from there.
Saving money takes patience and willpower, but I’m sure you can do it! Just take it one day at a time and you’ll see how easy it is to save money for emergencies.
Do you have an emergency fund? How did you go about finding the money to fund it?
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Congratulations on your Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award.
I like your blog name– Simpleigh…
Janice
Hi Janice, Thank you for stopping by…I hope you found something useful. Happy New Year!
HI,
It’s true. An emergency fund is vital.
I met you on Danny Ray’s site. Congratulations on being his featured blogger. I was another one of his featured bloggers. Perhaps check out my site if you could use a blogging tip or two.
Nice to meet you and happy new year.
Janice
Wow! Janice, your site is amazing! Your words are so relevant to me at this point in my blogging career. So much to read, so little time! 😉
I couldn’t agree more. The other great way to save is to take the additional savings you been saving once it gets large enough and apply it onto your mortgage through your lump sum payment pre payment privilege. In most circumstances you want to be paying down your mortgage today and not overleveraging. Although we are in a nice low interest rate market a debt is a debt and eventually interest rates will increase. Thanks for your post!
You are so right! That mortgage can be a monster to pay off early. Thanks so much for your comment! 🙂
I created an emergency fund when I took Dave Ramsey’s seminar a few years ago. Then i strayed away from the principles and am back where I started. Clearly, I need to do this again. It’s necessary and it does give you financial freedom knowing that you have some funds tucked away for emergencies rather than having to rely on a credit card.
Thanks for the aptly-timed reminder.
http://runwright.net/2015/12/14/12-days-of-christmas-day-one/
Ahhh…Dave Ramsey! Gotta love him! I also find that it is difficult to stay on track without constant reminders. I’m glad this helped!
I recently started saving money and was doing okay and of course, emergency this week. It was about a $900 emergency and I’m kicking myself for not having that emergency fund in place. I had a few hundred which definitely helped but if I would have been fully funded, I wouldn’t have been so stressed out about it.
Sorry to hear about your emergency. It can be very frustrating when something like that creeps up on us before we’re ready. I’m glad you had some savings to contribute towards the expense. Don’t let it discourage you, though. Keep pushing through and you’ll get there!