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Location: Chapel Hill, NC, formerly NoVA and Phila
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-We keep about 1 month's expenses as extra in our checking account
-We keep 1 month's expenses in a money market account
-We have 5 laddered CDs each containing one month of expenses. One CD comes due per year.
-I keep $100 at home in case I see something on Craigslist that I want to go buy quickly, so I don't have to stop at the bank
-I keep between $20 and $100 in my wallet. I try to keep more rather than less.*
*I was once driving by myself - young 20-something female - up I-95 on Thanksgiving day from DC to PA. It was cold and started to snow when my tire went flat. I pulled over and called AAA. After waiting a long while, a guy came out and put on my spare tire and drove away. I started to drive when the spare went flat, too. I had to wait again for AAA to come back - this time with a tow truck. They called around and the only tire place open was a shop in inner-city Baltimore. We got to the shop and the guys there sold me some used tire for $20 + $20 balancing, but I only had $20 on me. The guy from the shop had to drive me over to an ATM to withdraw money.
And that was the day I realized you should ALWAYS have cash on you because you never know when your tire will go flat and your spare will go flat and you will need a tire on a major holiday in the freezing, snowy weather from an inner-city shop that only takes cash.
$15k in cash to be used for emergency fund in money markets
$13k in cash for a car replacement fund (adding $150 every 2 weeks) in money markets
$1k in checking account
$110k in taxable money markets / stocks (to eventually be used to purchase a home someday)
$70k in 401k / IRAs
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