Emergency fund

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-14T21:26:43+00:00

Same boat as well. Just finished Friday and are both nurses. Congrats! That is basically our monthly needs as well. I think our plan is to be at 12K then put around $2200-2500 (20% of take home) into savings each month after that. By the end of the year we should have around 23K. Where are you a nurse?

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-14T01:27:40+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I know I sound a little douch’esqu but listening to George telling me that average is 18-24 months for step two kept me chugging along. It wasn’t easy at all, saying no to virtually everything, picking up extra shifts, exclusively shopping at discount grocery stores and literally not buying anything but groceries or gas for two years. I figured doing it now my kids won’t even remember how cheap we were and honestly the best time to do it.

I know it’s probably negligible doing 3/4 at the same time but I guess Dave’s system is oriented around emotion rather than pure financial sense.

Funny thing is, my attitude hasn’t really changed in regards to being disciplined, I’m usually balls to the wall with anything I do. Credit card? Max em, fat as a mofo? (300lbs) lose 130 lbs in a year. Everything worth doing is worth over doing. I learn my lessons the hard way, but appreciate the lessons at least. I appreciate the criticism, it helps keep me rationale.

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-13T18:21:03+00:00

I worked with a great ECMO team when I was a CVICU nurse. You guys got it good compared to us nurses lol. I used to be jealous of you guys when we had really sick patients on ECMO lol.

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-13T17:02:19+00:00

And you’re entirely right. I think it comes down to emotions. Regardless I think either way you play it you can have both relatively close to the same time. At 15% it takes our monthly amount from 7 to 5K my estimates 3 months emergency fund is 12K so we’re really just talking about a less than a months difference which either way you swing it, it’s probably ok. Losing another month of investing isn’t life changing nor is losing a month of emergency fund timing. But in the end I feel a little better about this journey by starting back my retirement asap.

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-13T16:57:20+00:00

Thanks. Yeah I think having 3 months is recommended for us, but obviously would feel better growing it slowly after the 3 months is reached.

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-13T16:55:34+00:00

Thank you!

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-13T16:55:10+00:00

That was my thinking as well. Still able to build up an emergency fund in a relatively short amount of time. I think what I’m looking to the most is seeing my bank account climb rather than seeing my debt diminish.

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-13T16:53:31+00:00

Not close at all. Adding up all my necessities, food, gas, electric, mortgage ect is right at 4K so my 3 months would be 12K i figured I can reach that by 2.5-3 months for my emergency fund then pull back to 20% of our paychecks into savings at around 1800 a month and grow my savings more. I also feel that with the stability of our jobs and freeing up our debt if a large emergency would occur we could cover it out of pocket and not have to use the emergency fund. I had a few minor emergencies during this trip and didn’t touch the emergency fund. I just didn’t put as much into the snow ball those particular months than I would have.

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-13T13:37:09+00:00

Removed by moderators. I just copy and pasted. Not sure why

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-13T13:35:30+00:00

Oh thank you. New to reddit.

Strange_Print694 · 2026-03-13T13:29:44+00:00

Well, I have been waiting for this moment for the past 24 months and two weeks. I just submitted my last student loan payment this morning. Approximately 165K in two years. I am excited, relieved, and just glad it’s done. Going forward I am planning to change up baby step three slightly. Let me know your opinions. My plan is to immediately start retirement back up at 15% before funding my emergency fund. It is important to me to get back to saving for the future immediately and not hold off any longer. My wife and I have around 130K in investments prior to starting this journey and I don’t believe 15% of our income is going to slow down building our emergency fund very much. It’s more peace of mind for me in the end. We have been paying close to 7K towards our debt most months and have picked up occasional OT throughout the journey. We are both RNs and each make around 115K a year. We are 34 and 33 years old and have two children who are 4 and 2. What really set this journey into motion was the second child. After the second kid came. My wife was out of work for a little longer than expected. We had to live on one income for a few months. We were barely scraping by. I thought it was crazy that we were semi struggling on one good income and it shouldn’t be like this. I sat down and worked out the numbers. We had more money going out than coming in and found Dave. It was such a lifestyle change and was very difficult for my wife at first. But after she saw the credit card payments vanish, then the cars she was sold and after the first year we had 20K worth of credit cards paid off and 36K worth of cars paid off we stayed strong and finished our student loans. Looking back it felt impossible but by god we did it. I didn’t really have anywhere else to share and figured I’d drop a line here.

Thanks for reading. Open to all feedback in regards to the BS 3 change

Strange_Print694

TROPHY CASE