BDKmom
04-16-2013, 05:03 PM
How much money (or percentage of your savings) do you keep in easy to get to (meaning you can access within 2 business days or less) accounts? Just your emergency fund? Other short-term goal-based savings (meaning, saving for a car or house projects or vacations)? Do you think it's a good idea to have cash in your home?
DH and I are in the very fortunate situation of owning a small business that is doing better than expected. We have not changed our standard of living much, since we don't know how long this will last, and we want to save as much for the future as we can. We are fully funding our retirement and are setting aside $ for the kids in 529s. We also have an emergency fund equal to one year salary for one of us in a bank savings account. So far, everything else we have invested with a financial planner, and it is all stuff that we can get to relatively easily, but don't want to really mess with unless our income level decreased to the extent that we had to use that money.
But then there are things like cars and vacations that we want to save for, and DH and I don't really agree as to where to keep our funds. He likes to see a good bit pile up in our account before we invest it. I want to invest as quickly as possible to maximize earning potential. His reasoning is, with any investment there is a certain amount of risk, so he wants to keep more on hand in case anything happened (to us or to the world economy, I suppose). My thought is, as long as we communicate to our financial planner what kind of time frame we are looking at on using the funds, we can invest in some low risk type things that we can easily draw out of to at least be earning something.
How do y'all handle this? Any recommendations or guidelines or general thoughts? Or what would be a good compromise so that we can get on the same page?
I know this may be too specific to individual needs, but I also know a lot of the folks here are good with money, so any perspecive would be appreciated.
DH and I are in the very fortunate situation of owning a small business that is doing better than expected. We have not changed our standard of living much, since we don't know how long this will last, and we want to save as much for the future as we can. We are fully funding our retirement and are setting aside $ for the kids in 529s. We also have an emergency fund equal to one year salary for one of us in a bank savings account. So far, everything else we have invested with a financial planner, and it is all stuff that we can get to relatively easily, but don't want to really mess with unless our income level decreased to the extent that we had to use that money.
But then there are things like cars and vacations that we want to save for, and DH and I don't really agree as to where to keep our funds. He likes to see a good bit pile up in our account before we invest it. I want to invest as quickly as possible to maximize earning potential. His reasoning is, with any investment there is a certain amount of risk, so he wants to keep more on hand in case anything happened (to us or to the world economy, I suppose). My thought is, as long as we communicate to our financial planner what kind of time frame we are looking at on using the funds, we can invest in some low risk type things that we can easily draw out of to at least be earning something.
How do y'all handle this? Any recommendations or guidelines or general thoughts? Or what would be a good compromise so that we can get on the same page?
I know this may be too specific to individual needs, but I also know a lot of the folks here are good with money, so any perspecive would be appreciated.