Why I Broke Up With My Emergency Fund
episode
Wealthy After 40: Retirement Planning and Budgeting for Gen X
15 min
1 speaker
3 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is this episode about and who is the host?
Welcome to the Wealthy After 40 podcast, the show for Gen X women and couples who are ready to ditch financial stress and feel confident about retirement. I'm your host, Dailene Higgins, money coach and retirement strategist to help you gain clarity and confidence with your money by creating a spending plan. that aligns with your financial goals and dreams so you can spend intentionally, save consistently, and feel at peace about your future. Join me every week to understand your money, simplify your decisions, and take intentional steps toward the life you want. Welcome to the episode. I'm why I broke up with my emergency fund. And I hope this helps you in more areas than just an emergency fund.
So if you're somebody that's like, oh, well, I already got that and you are going to skip past me, don't do it. This is really just about how I was able to navigate past some traditional advice that didn't work for me. That is the big takeaway from this episode. And as I share my story, my thought process, I hope you can apply it to whatever area you are being challenged with right now. And to support you in those areas, in those financial foundations, I would love to have you join me in my Retirement Ready Workshop. This is being held April 4th, so if you're listening to this afterward, you can still go to the link that I'll mention in just a minute to find future dates. Head over to elevatefinances.us backslash workshop.
This is a three-hour live workshop. active. We're interacting. You'll get some coaching. We are looking at your numbers foundationally and in readyment for retirement. I don't know if readyment is a word, but in getting ready for retirement, we look at all of your numbers. I help you put that in, understand why. We run some calculations. From those calculations, I help you define what your area of focus should be.
Why did the host question the traditional 3–6 months emergency fund recommendation?
So if that sounds of any interest to you, head over to elevatefinances.us backslash workshop and join. $55, three hours. It's on a Saturday. Yeah, I hope you'll join me. It kind of gives you some clarity around... The messy middle you're in, kind of, you're in the middle of it and you're like, I just don't know what I'm doing. I'm juggling so, so much and I don't know what to do. I don't know what to focus on. This workshop is for you. So back to the topic of why I broke up with my emergency fund. It was a good thing. It was a good thing. But I'm just going to tell you very quickly, as a financial coach, I do help clients fund an emergency fund. So hang on, hang tight, listen to my story. So if you listened to my money journey story, I've shared that in depth kind of along the way.
But while I was on the very early beginnings of this money journey, as I was putting together all of my financial foundations, getting everything in order, really using my budget, really enhancing my savings, I get to the emergency fund. And at that time, I'm using blogs. Podcasts were, I don't even know if they were around. So I'm reading all the blogs and the majority of the advice, majority of the definitions are to save three to six months or six to 12 months just in case of job loss. That is your emergency fund. That did not make any sense to me. I was in a position, very gratefully, that there was a less than a 1% chance I was going to lose my job unless I did something erroneous or the world ended, I guess.
But anyways, that caused the confusion. I know I need to save for emergency fund. This is what they're telling me it's for. Did not compute. Did not commute. Now, I did believe I needed an emergency fund. But trying to define it, get to the definition was where I was being challenged, was where I was trying to take a standard piece of advice and apply it to my personal life. I want you to think about that with the challenges you're having. So as I'm just mulling it over, thinking through it, I'm like, okay, well, what other emergencies? Because if I'm saving for a job loss and that never happens, what about these other areas? And those other areas for me were, what if something big happens with the house?
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Chapters
3 chaptersSpeakers
1 identifiedMore from Wealthy After 40: Retirement Planning and Budgeting for Gen X
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