Throughout life, there will be many financial decisions to make. Some of them may arise due to bad money management, like getting into heavy debt or you may need to repair your credit (in which case you would need the Credit Repair Magic software.) However, there are a couple of things that you can do before getting into any financial difficulties; start a home budget and set aside funds as an emergency fund. Here we will be discussing how to protect your financial life for a period of three to twelve months.
The idea of an emergency fund is to stop you from using your credit cards and thus getting into debt. If you are a good money manager then you probably use your credit cards a few times a month and then immediately pay off the balance. However, what if you had a financial emergency and you didn’t have the funds to cover it? You would probably use your credit card.
As you can imagine, it is a lot better if you have a fund of money that you can use for an emergency instead of your credit card. So, how do you go about setting aside some emergency cash? The main question is how much you need to set aside. It is generally accepted that you need to have enough money to cover your daily living expenses for three month at a minimum. It is better though if you can save enough for six months and the ideal would be to have enough for twelve months.
If you are striving to set aside twelve months of emergency cash then you could try and set aside about 8% of your monthly income so that by the end of one year you would have money for one year. If you happen to receive a bonus, promotion, or another unexpected one-off payment then stick it in your emergency fund. Another way that you could have surplus money is if you are eligible for a mortgage modification. You can actually do this yourself instead of paying for a loan modification company. From the extra money saved from your DIY Loan Modification you should be able to accumulate money faster for your twelve month fund.
Finally, to the question of where to put your emergency money; it has to be somewhere that is safe yet easily accessible. So, don’t keep it in hard cash in your house as you will be tempted to dip into it, and don’t tie up the money in stocks that might lose value or put it away in less accessible investments. The best decision is to open a savings account. Shop around for the best offer and study their interest rate, minimum balance, and other terms.