Canadian Capitalist

A Canadian Personal Finance Weblog

Emergency Funds

September 16th, 2005 · 3 Comments

Many financial experts advise us to have six months worth of living expenses safely tucked away in a savings account as an emergency fund. A few months back, I wrote that emergency funds are not for everyone (I don’t have one) and was pleasantly surprised to see a similar argument by MSN Money columnist Liz Weston in a recent column titled The $0 emergency fund.

An emergency fund is unnecessary for someone who has a net worth that is much higher than their annual living expenses, has enough equity in their personal residence to obtain a secured line of credit and is very disciplined with their spending. A savings account with ING Direct earns a fully taxable interest of 2.4%, but a pre-payment on the mortgage will yield at least 4% in tax-free interest savings, even in today’s low-rate environment.

Tags: Saving

3 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Anonymous // Sep 16, 2005 at 7:56 am

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  • 2 The Dividend Guy // Sep 17, 2005 at 9:52 am

    Nice spam in the previous comment. These comments are getting ridiculous.

    Garth Turner has been a big proponent of this type of emergency fund plan - use credit lines to help in an emergency. He says invest the money instead of pay down the mortgage, but a similar idea.

    Just from a “sleep at night” type of mentality, I want to have some cash in an emergency fund. The kicker to this article is that you still need to have your financial house in very good order for this to work. For many, building and emergency fund is all part of the “financial better-ment” process.

  • 3 Goldwatch // Sep 19, 2005 at 4:59 pm

    I could not disagree more. Cash is king. You said yourself, families building up an emergency fund are vulnerable. So when they have it, they won’t be any longer. and if you have cash, the bank can’t cut you off, cause they think you are the David Glonk that stiffed em on a car loan. I am a big fan of cash in hand. cheers
    Rick

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