Here is Where You Need to Stash Your Emergency Fund

You need an emergency fund. I need them emergency fund. Everyone should have an emergency fund. Unfortunately, Oprah isn’t handing them out. You’ve got to take care of it yourself.

Hopefully, you know that your emergency fund should not be stashed in your checking account. Because if it’s there you’ll spend it.

Having your emergency fund in a separate but easily accessible account ensures you’re not spending it but can access it when need be.

Generally, a savings account at a different bank will do the trick. Here are a few places you could stash your emergency fund.

Ally Bank

Ally is an online bank with no monthly maintenance fees, a decent interest rate, and because it’s online it’s easy to set up quickly.

At the time of writing this post, Ally is offering a 1.25% interest rate on savings accounts, which to put it into perspective a decent interest rate earning on savings is around 1%. 

Capital One

Personally, I stash my emergency fund in of my Capital One savings accounts. Not only is it super easy to set up an online savings account at Capital One but you can set up multiple ones for different goals.

Think, one for an emergency fund, one for a travel fund, one to save for a car, etc.

It has a decent interest rate at 1% and no maintenance fees.  It’s is easy to set up online and really I just like how you can easily create targeted savings accounts at Capital One.

Qapital

Qapital is where I end up saving my money to pay taxes. Qapital is an app that saves for you, which means you don’t have to think about it. You just set up the rules for when it should save and it does the heavy lifting for you.

So anytime I receive a payment it’ll stash 30% of it into my Qapital account for me to pay taxes later. But even if you’re not worried about paying quarterly taxes, Qapital has a ton of other rules that you can set to help you build up your savings.

Qapital can save by rounding to the nearest dollar or two dollars or five dollars, whatever you want and put that cash into an account with Qaptial that you can then withdraw from anytime. Qapital is not only a great place to save your money but also a great tool to help you build up a savings.

Anywhere Other Than Your Checking Account Bank

Ultimately, the goal is to have your emergency fund separate from your checking account so really any other bank will do.

Just make sure you do your due diligence. Make sure the bank is FDIC insured. Know what, if any, fees they charge. And of course, make sure you’re getting a somewhat decent interest rate on your money.

Lastly, most savings accounts will have a monthly transaction limit of 6, it’s by regulation. While you shouldn’t be digging into your emergency fund that often each month if you are using a savings account for some other reason, it’s something to keep in mind. If you exceed the transaction limit it will usually cost you some money.

Wrapping it Up with a Bow on Top

So long as your emergency fund is in a separate account from your regular checking account and easily accessible, then it’s in a good place.

Ideally, you want to earn some interest on your savings with a good interest-rate being somewhere on the 1% mark.

Keep in mind that transaction counts are usually limited and you’ll be well on your way to building up your emergency fund so it’s there when you have an emergency.