Importance of Emergency and Opportunity Funds

Today is the last day of year 2012. I am happy to note that I managed to build up my personal Emergency Fund that allows me and my family to survive without my income for six months.
It took me more than two years to save up this amount of money. This is because I had used up all my personal savings for my wedding last year. In addition, I am also the sole-breadwinner, had a baby girl and owns a car. Therefore, it took me quite some time to save up this amount of money. My partner and myself decided that we would only dip into fund when I lost my job or faced a personal finance crisis. Henceforth, we put the fund into a fixed deposit.
SG Wealth Builder
SG Wealth Builder

I always encourage young people who just entered the workforce to build up their Emergency Fund as soon as possible. Life is always unpredictable. You never know when you will lose your job or encounter personal finance crisis.

Having an emergency fund can help to provide short term security against market uncertainties. It allows you and your family to carry on life as per normal whilst you embark on the recovery journey. Without this sum of money as interim support, you have no choice but to borrow from friends and relatives. Personally, I don’t like to, and have yet, to borrow from my friends and relatives.
Of course, having this Emergency Fund is only one of the key elements of my personal finance. It would not help to enhance my wealth nor elevate me to another wealth level. To me, it is just another “shield” or protection for personal finance. My next course of action is to build up my Opportunity Fund – war chest for investments and business opportunities.

I am confident that this Opportunity Fund can be built up in March next year. However, I believe the short term market condition is not conducive for investing. My belief is only to invest during crisis times.  In the mean time, I am compiling research on some of the stocks and other form of investments in this blog. Stay tune for more updates!

Join me in my investment journey and read my financial adventures for free! Through the sharing, my vision is to improve and change people’s lives. In school, we don’t learn how to budget, manage our finances, build wealth and invest our money. Instead, we are taught useless subjects which we would never put to use most of the times during our working lives.

Yet, managing our money is an important life skill that is critical to our survival in the society. Many people start to realize how it is importance of managing money only when they face the prospect of financial ruins, by then which would be too late for remedies. Thus, I started this blog to share articles on finances which I aspire to make a positive impact in others’ lives.

You can opt to subscribe email updates on my articles for free by entering your email address below.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Magically yours,

SG Wealth Builder

4 thoughts on “Importance of Emergency and Opportunity Funds

  • December 31, 2012 at 11:31 pm
    Permalink

    It’s great to hear that you’ve managed to saved enough for rainy day. As for your Opportunity fund, how much would you be targeting?

  • January 2, 2013 at 6:56 pm
    Permalink

    Hi, I am starting small. So my target is to build a war chest of SGD50,000. I will only invest during crisis times.

  • January 3, 2013 at 10:01 pm
    Permalink

    Having a six month emergency fund is so important. I was in a car accident and it really came in handy. Now we are trying to save again so we have one for the future.

Leave a Reply