The Frugal Siblings

The topic of stay at home moms is one that is not discussed enough. In current times it is just assumed that both parents will work. In the “olden” days both parents would work but in different ways. Pa would go out on the farm and do farm stuff and Ma would stay home and sew cloths and cook and clean. It is not until recent times that we have found enough time savings that it has even become possible for the mom to even be able to leave the house to get a paying job. Just because something is possible does not mean that it should be done. My wife is a stay at home mom. As I have said to her many times she has the harder job. Taking care of a child is a ton of work. Through some kind of crazy math taking care of 2 kids is like caring for a whole army. I really do appreciate all that my wife does for our household. My wife is more than the sum of her parts but because I am a numbers nerd let's break down what her value as a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom) is. (Side note: Honey I am rea

        My husband is an IT recruiter. He is very good at his job. After college he got a job with a private recruiting firm. He worked there for a about year . Then we decided to move to Colorado and he got a corporate job. Two years into that he got recruited for a 20k increase to work a contracting job. After we got married and were starting a family I pressured him to find a non- contract job for the benefits. He got a dream job as a trainer for new recruiters. His first day was when I was 6 months pregnant with our son. Exactly 6 days before my scheduled c-section and around 3 months with the company my husband got laid off.     We did not have an emergency fund.    I would not change the time my husband and I got to spend with my son and how he was able to help. It took 4 months for my husband to find a job that was right for our new family. We had 12k in our bank account. By the time he got his new job we had $1200.     It was a very stressful time for our family.

In the first post I discussed how much money you need in your emergency fund. In the second post I discussed the standard places to put your emergency fund money. In this post I will discuss some alternatives to the traditional emergency fund. A Roth IRA is a type of account that allows you to invest after-tax dollars and not pay tax on your earnings. They can be a great deal if you are starting from a lower tax base (IE just starting your career) because it can save you lots of money in taxes. One of the things that makes Roth IRAs so powerful is you are allowed to withdraw the principal (the money you invested but not the earnings) at any time. This comes in handy for an emergency fund because you can fund a retirement account and have some money set aside in case of an emergency. It is the classic two birds with one stone. The money should be invested conservatively. This could be bonds or index funds. The best place to open an investing account is Vanguard . They have a gre

Note: No links in this article are referral links. These are exclusively for information. I don't make any money if you click a link. I truly believe that these are the best options at the time of writing. Once you know how much you need in your emergency fund the next question is where to put it. The way to think about how an emergency fund should be laid out is to place money depending on how quickly you might need it. All emergency money should be immediately accessible but some places are a bit harder to get to than others. This can be a good thing because it can create a speedbump to prevent unnecessary access. The first place to put your money is in your day to day checking account. I always have an extra 1 month's expenses in my checking account. This gives you an initial bit of cushion that can cover small emergencies and give you a bit of a buffer in case you don't quite do the math right when paying your bills. When selecting a checking account I look fo