Product for emergency fund

SPAXX

I’ve been putting it in short term bonds and reinvesting every 2 months. I figure I could use a credit card for anything I needed until the bond finished

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I’ve been putting it in short term bonds and reinvesting every 2 months. I figure I could use a credit card for anything I needed until the bond finished

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Mind me asking what bonds you are buying and the returns? I have a HYSA with enough to pay bills, etc., but most of my emergency fund is in laddered T-bills.

I do not overthink it with some grand plan. Have a few thousand cash on hand, in event of major power outages and/or no access to funds.

Credit Cards would be used for excessive emergencies in a normal situation, which would grant you time to assemble funds.

I do have a couple money market accounts, however they are not the front line of an emergency plan. PCOXX and FGTXX

How big of an emergency are you talking about?

Can you write checks directly from the account, or do you need to cash in the funds and transfer to a separate account?

When you need the cash, how long does it take to become available?

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Can you write checks directly from the account, or do you need to cash in the funds and transfer to a separate account?

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If you have a Fidelity account, they treat their own money market funds as cash. In other words, there is no need to sell ahead of time to cover a debit. Fidelity will automatically liquidate enough of the money market fund to cover any withdrawal. So yes, funds are immediately available to cover ATM, billpay, checks, ACH pull and buy stocks. I don't believe any other brokerage offers this.

I keep 2-3 months of average monthly expenses in FDLXX as ~95% interest is exempt from state taxes.

For the rest of my emergency funds, I use a combination of I-bonds and 6/12 month t-bills.

5.35% online checking w FITNESS Bank sounds interesting. Just got to avg 10k steps monthly to get the incentive rate.

Since you're with Schwab you can buy individual t-bills using Schwab.com.

The minimum purchase amount is $25,000 and the t-bills are liquid. You can sell a t-bill and the funds are settled immediately.

Then you can either have the funds swept into a Schwab cash sweep account which you can write checks on or you can link your bank checking account to your Schwab account and you can transfer the settled funds from the t-bill sale to your bank account and have availability for writing checks the next day.

As for as rates on t-bills, today you can easily get 4.25+% (annualized) for two month bills but if you're willing to go out to August maturities you can get 4.35+%.