Canna Campbell

you should definitely be prioritising building up that emergency money as quickly as possible, which means obviously going back to the budget, looking at what you can temporarily cut out or cut down and then redirecting those funds to a separate savings account.

A redraw facility or an offset account is a great way to hold that money if you have a home.

But if you are sitting in a safe, secure position, you think, well, okay, I get it.

I do need emergency money.

I don't have any.

I need to get started.

Just look at your budget and set up a regular savings plan.

For example, $200 per week if you can afford that.

Because by the end of the year, if you automate it and you stick to it, there's $10,000 sitting in that account, which you haven't had to think too hard about making happen other than programming it and planning it in your budget.

So you just focus on short-term, small amounts of money.

So you would say to yourself, okay, by the end of July 2026, I want to have $1,000 saved up.

And then once you've got that $1,000, you then do the same process again.

You go, okay, well, I want to take it from $1,000 to $1,500.

But if you invest some time understanding what that money represents, the why behind that money, it's not just a, oh, my gosh, I've got to have $10,000 in emergency money.

It's actually...

I'm building this because this is going to make sure that I don't go back financially.

I don't undo all of the hard work that I've done with my own financial journey so far.

You'll take it a lot more seriously and you'll also be, because of that, a lot more open to opportunities to save more money, to put more money into that sooner so that you can actually tick that box off and then go back to all the other things that actually add value to our lives financially but also add further financial resilience through something like investing.

Small amounts of money on a regular basis, that habit, that consistency, and that will build and compound into a decent savings amount.

And I mean, as I said, it took, I think, eight years for us to build up that emergency money.