For almost the entirety of our marriage, Tara and I have had an emergency fund set aside. We’ve almost always had at least $1,000 in the emergency fund and, for about the past 2 years, we’ve had 3 months of living expenses saved there as well. Circumstances have changed for us, so we are continuing to build it up (we had a baby, bought a house and are preparing to have a second baby), but the idea has stayed the same: have money set aside that we can use if things go bad.
For a long time, Tara and I had a saving account through Chase that we kept our emergency fund in. Having it in there was good because it was immediately accessible, but it had a very low interest rate at .01%. I think over the 4 years the most interest we would accrue was 2 cents a month. I wasn’t super worried about the interest rate because the money wasn’t in there to make money, but about 2 years ago, Tara and I started saving for a down payment. We put that money into an online savings account with Goldman Sachs who has a savings account called Marcus with a 1.5% interest rate, no fees and no minimum balance to earn the interest. After a little while, I started to think of how much our emergency fund could earn if we put it in this Marcus account. The only downside is that the funds wouldn’t be available for 2-3 business days, so Tara and I talked in depth about what sort of emergencies we would need to pay for immediately. We couldn’t think of many that we couldn’t just put on our credit card, pull out the emergency fund money and then apply towards the card in less than three days. I consulted Jacob and my dad beforehand too and they were all in agreeance, so that same day I moved our money to the Marcus account, keeping $500 in the Chase account.
If you don’t use credit cards, having your funds available to you immediately is going to be more important. If you do have credit cards, this might be a good option for you. We use credit cards for travel points anyways, so being able to get those would make it worth it for us.
Why we recommend Marcus
The Marcus account now has a 2.25% APY. In the time I’ve had this account, the percentage rate has gone up almost an entire percentage point and is one of the highest interest rates I can find for an online savings account. When you add on the fact that there are no fees and no account minimum balances to earn the interest, it makes a lot of sense to have this account. Whether you are using it for your emergency fund or just for general savings, we highly recommend Goldman Sach’s Marcus account.
You can sign up for Marcus through the widget on the sidebar, they also recommend Marcus as their top online savings account. Or use this link.
Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or send us an email at thefundfamily@gmail.com. Feel free to
That’s a really good idea! And also a really good interest rate! Thanks for sharing.
It’s worked for us so far! We like actually making money 🙂
A Marcus account is an awesome option. Thanks for sharing!
I’m actually considering a switch since Marcus just lowered their interest rate
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This is a really great idea! I actually went through the same thought process, and now I only keep a max of $100 in my cash account. The rest sits in a high interest account. I have to remember to transfer prior to any big expenses, but otherwise, I just keep topping back up to $100 when I’ve depleted my buffer and it works for me.
Marcus is really interesting! We don’t have it here in Australia yet, but there are a lot of smarts at Goldman Sachs propping them up. I wonder if their partnership with Apple for the apple credit card will be any good? The cash back arrangement sounds pretty decent