My first thought upon looking at this point on the Money Manifesto is that I need to update it because my current short term goal is $20,000 and my still long term goal is a full year of expenses, which is probably around $35,000.

Happily though, I have managed to hit that $10,000 goal. A few years ago, actually.

Because I’ve been working on several other savings goals like house down payment/tuition and a new car, I’ve been pretty lax about the emergency savings goals the last few years.

I suppose I felt like in a real emergency, I could plunder some of those other savings and just defer my purchasing plans or buy something older (car)/smaller (house).

In 2021, my goal was to add $1,000 to my emergency savings (which I managed). In 2018, 2019 and 2020 my emergency savings weren’t even a goal.

In a way, this is kind of cool. For many years, it was a pretty prime goal and once it hit $10,000 I felt safe in backing off it and prioritizing other goals. All of those years I listed about didn’t have a goal to add to my emergency savings but all of them had goals to max out my available retirement accounts and invest in my brokerage account.

I don’t really see funding my emergency fund ever becoming a primary goal again, unless I have to use a substantial quantity of it. Instead, I am content adding maybe a $1,000 a year. I’m only about two years short on my $20,000 goal then.

After I finish school, I may be in a better position to prioritize contributing a little more.

Looking back, some of the most useful things I did in trying to hit my emergency fund goals were:

Setting a large goal and then smaller sub-goals. I knew I wanted to reach $10,000 and then I knew I wanted to reach a year’s salary.

But I celebrated hitting $100, then $1000, then $5000, and finally $10,000.

Those first two goals actually weren’t that hard. The next two took a few years.

In the beginning, I also dedicated specific side hustles to my goals, so things like my blog income or survey money would all just go into that savings account.

Bit by bit it added up – clearly it was more noticeable at first, but that was definitely when it was hardest to start saving.

Different side hustles that I found worked well for this:

• UserTesting
• Transcribing
• Gigwalk/Mystery Shopping

None of those really made much, but they were super flexible. I could just pick them up whenever I had a little extra time.

The side hustles that made the biggest difference for the bottom line:

• Blogging
• Freelance Writing

Both of those were much harder to monetize. It took a while to convince people to pay me to write and I wrote for really low amounts at first.

Blogging took even longer to make anything, but after a substantial investment of time, it’s definitely my biggest side hustle income overall.

The other thing I considered what where to put my emergency fund. When I started it in 2008, I opened a Capital One savings account because it had pretty high interest – which has since slowly dropped.

In reality, I should probably move those funds over to a higher interest bank, but sometimes I am just lazy.

If you are looking for the first time, I would look for an account that has a high interest rate in a bank that has generally good customer service reviews.

I’m also a fan of putting it in a different bank that my primary checking account. Personally, out of sight out of mind is a real thing.

If you’re interested in seeing how the other goals on my Money Manifesto are going, you can read those posts here:

1. ) I will pay off all my debt. 
2. ) I will tithe 10%
3. ) I will save at least 15%

What are your thoughts on emergency funds?