Savings.... do you put something aside for a rainy day?

I never did, and I always ended up having to use credit cards whenever I got a surprise bill.

Now I'm starting to put a little aside every paycheck so that the next time I'm surprised, I might be able to use cash.

This is separate from retirement stuff.

I wonder... is there a standard amount? I think I saw Suze Orman say that everyone should have 6 months of living expenses in the bank. It will take me FOREVER to get to that.

Do you save? What percent?

I was dead broke about 10 years ago and vowed to never be there again so I obsess about having a lot of money in the bank.

I can live over a year on my savings right now.

We're set for retirement already and we're only in our 40's and we'll own our house free and clear in 3 yrs.

I saved a lot for a rainy day, but it rained for a very long time, so now most of it is gone.

Start with what you can, until you get to 3 months or so worth of bare-bones expenses. Build that up to 6 months. Eventually, you might want to build it up to a year.

While I keep 3 months worth of expenses easily accessible in my savings account, I do have part of my emergency fund in CDs. You can ladder your CDs up... starting by buying them every couple of months to mature at 6 month intervals and within a year or so you can have them reinvested at 1 year, but you'll have something that comes up each month (i.e.- some of your six month CDs will be reinvested as 1 year CDs while you're still buying 6 month CDs. Eventually you can stretch this out to longer periods of time.

that it always seems to be raining! x(

I've tried in the pas, sat down and figured out where every dollar went, I cut this and that until one day I realized I'm going to die broke, and my relatives are going to fight over whatever is in the bank at the time, so, I just went back to being a grasshopper.

I don't know what the percentage of my income it is...

But it's not much!

Just $50 every month, into my savings account...

Not much, but it's growing...

I think I have about a year's worth of expenses in savings. Most of my savings went into my house, which I paid off in 4 years instead of the 30 for which it was amortized. I usually do maximum IRA donations, but will not this year, since I am retired and don't make enough to save that much. I will put just enough in my IRA to get my income tax liability down to zero. That's the plan anyway.

Which means I have a good 12months+ emergency stash if I need it.