Coming back to the topic of emergency funds, I want to stress one important aspect: never use this money for pleasure, vacations, shopping or small time things that don’t matter in the long run. Crisis strikes everyone in a way or another, and you will eventually be sorry that you spent the money on that kind of stuff.

So the big question is how much is enough? When this country was on a roll, people were recommending other people to have enough money for 3 to 6 months in their banks.  In the instable financial situation we are in now, we would need more money in our long-term funds. The economy is in pretty bad shape, and inflation can make your fund lose its value really quick.

Right now, it may seem like you’ll never be able to have a considerable amount of money put aside, but you have to take things slowly. Bit by bit, with patience and perseverance, you can raise it. Even if you can’t do more than $10 a week, it’s way better than nothing. And hey, that means more than $500 in a year. It’s not much, but it’s sure better to have it.

The important thing is not to get discouraged and one baby step at a time, you can make a difference. There are some advices you should take in consideration when you decide to build such a fund.

First off, stop wasting money. Try to keep track of your expenses and see how much money you use on useless stuff; we all do, but it’s important to control it. If you become aware of it, you might be able to restrain yourself. Even if you replace your $5 coffee with homemade coffee, it’s still something that counts.

Secondly, there are probably a lot of things that you have at home that you never ever use. Why don’t you organize a garage sale to get rid of it and earn some money out of it?

But don’t you go buying new junk after you sold the old one! Now that you saw that some things are just a waste of money, be more careful when you are tempted to buy new stuff; after all, even if you managed to sell your stuff, you still wasted more money when you bought them in the first place.

Evaluate your memberships and see what is worth keeping. Do you really go to the gym? Do you really watch all those TV channels? Do you really need to speak so much on your phone? I’m guessing not, and you could sure use the extra money!

As you can see, it’s the little things that can help you achieve great things. Everyone needs emergency funds, and no matter how poor you think you are, there are always things you can cut down!