How much money should I have in Savings?

Question

I want to be financially secure with my finances. What is the recommended amount?

Answer 1

Everyone that answer that you should have 3-6 months of income in your savings account is correct. Why? In case of emergency purposes such as losing your job or being in the hospital, you will have easy liquidable assets to withdraw from.

For securing your retirement, you need to invest your money. Putting money in a savings account or CDs will take forever to accumulate money. Mutual funds has historically earn an average rate of 12% in the past 25 years (at least the mutual funds I have do). Open a Roth IRA if you qualify. Find out what your investment objective is. You might be able to find investment profile questionaires online to find out where you should invest your money. I personally like Legg Mason Partners Fund because of its track record of success and the experience of the portfolio managers. You might like something different such as Fidelity or Van Kampen or American Funds. The point is that you should pick a family and pick mutual funds from that family. Why? You get breakpoints as the value of all your funds in the same family reaches a certain amount.

After you pick your mutual funds from the same fund family, now you need to decide how you want to invest your money. You may put in one lump sum and max out your IRA. Or you can invest using dollar cost averaging. I prefer investing using dollar cost averaging because the market always fluctuate and over the long run, you will lower the cost per share you own.

Answer 2

Well you have to be able to save money so you have to check your cash flow to get that amount. There is no point in trying to save if your expenses are too high. But I would like to have a couple of months expense money saved in case there is an emergency.

Answer 3

You need at least 3-6 months of expenses in a basic savings or money market acct. Above that, you need to be saving about 15% of your income in retirement accounts.

Get Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover". He covers all this & more better than I can on here.

Answer 4

It depends... do you have any debt? If you have debt, set aside $1000 for emergencies, and put the rest towards paying off your debt.

Once your debt is paid off, you will want to have 3-6 months of expenses set aside.

Answer 5

Enough to cover living expenses for three months, at least. Some say six months.

Answer 6

i always heard enough to pay all your bills and expenses for 3 months.6 if you can do it.

Answer 7

4 dollars

Answer 8

That would depend on your age and your income.