After reading around and doing some research, I am starting to wonder if our emergency fund can be put to better use. Right now, it’s just sitting in our savings account, earning practically zilch waiting for an emergency that may never happen to occur. Considering our aggressive strategy to save and invest as much as we can, I think there are better ways in which this money can be deployed and put to work. But first, we need to get comfortable with the idea of not having a traditional safety net of cash sitting in the bank. [Read more…] about Why We’re About to BLOW Our Emergency Savings
Save & Invest
How To Figure Out Your Savings Rate
In my last blog post, I talked about my 2016 Savings/Investing Plan. I stated I wanted to increase my 2015 Savings rate from 15% to 44% in 2016.
What is the Savings Rate? Your Savings Rate is a percentage of your savings to your income. Simply put, your savings rate is your total savings (including retirement account contributions) divided by your after-tax income (plus added back pretax retirement contributions).
Why is it a Dirty Little Secret? The personal savings rate is not something a lot of people keep track of or discuss. I find it more common for people to discuss how much they make vs how much they save/invest. [Read more…] about How To Figure Out Your Savings Rate
My 2016 Savings & Investing Plan
This year I want to drastically save and invest more money. Since I began working at my company, I’ve only contributed the minimum to my 401k plan to get my company match. My husband has also only contributed the minimum amount to his retirement plan. We already have no credit card debt (while most spending is done on our credit cards, it’s paid off in full every month), own our cars outright and have a healthy cash emergency fund. But if we want to reach financial independence sooner rather than later we need to ramp up our savings/investing plan right away.
Here are our saving & investing goals for 2016 (I won’t get too specific on the concepts; rather this will be a general guide): [Read more…] about My 2016 Savings & Investing Plan