Category: Personal Finance

Essays · Personal Finance

The Case Against Emergency Funds

Douglass Gaking1 Comment

Most financial advisors will probably tell you to establish an emergency savings account. I personally am a fan of the emergency fund strategy, but it is different for every person, depending on what kinds of risks they have in their lives. I talk with my finance classes about different types of risk we are exposed to:

  • Concentration risk
  • Income risk
  • Inflation risk
  • Interest rate risk
  • Liquidity risk
  • Personal risk

Emergency savings can help with some of these risks, like a medical emergency or job loss, but they lose buying power to inflation, and they have an opportunity cost. The question is which of the risk factors above carries the most weight for you. If you work in a highly volatile industry, income risk may be a major concern. If you are a contracted teacher like me, maybe not so much. This is why it is important to “play devil’s advocate” and make arguments against conventional wisdom in finance. Let’s examine the argument against establishing the infamous emergency savings account. Continue reading “The Case Against Emergency Funds” →

Personal Finance

9 Financial Questions You Should Be Asking Yourself

Douglass Gaking1 Comment

There are 9 fundamental questions that everyone from about age 15 to age 115 should be asking themselves about their finances. Once we have asked them, and hopefully answered them, we need to keep checking up on them every few months to make sure we are staying on track. My goal for this blog is to help you ask the right questions, and hopefully find the right answers.

Notice that I said “help you find.” No two people have the same exact answers to all of the questions below, so no one financial advisor can have the perfect solution for you. It is something you have to find for yourself, through studying good sources of information, and sometimes through some trial and error. There are a lot of people out there who have plans for your money that aren’t on track with your values, goals, and risk tolerances, so you have to take responsibility for your money. Don’t leave these choices up to anyone but yourself.

I hope that I can help filter out some of the noise and provide some helpful ideas as you do that. That is my goal for this blog, which will start with posts that focus on these 9 questions. Without further ado, here are the 9 financial questions you should be asking yourself:

  1. What are my values?
  2. What are my long term goals?
  3. What intermediate- and short-term goals should I have?
  4. What is my net worth?
  5. What is my risk tolerance?
  6. What can I do to improve my net worth and work toward goals?
  7. How should I adjust my current investment allocations to better meet my goals and risk tolerances?
  8. How should I allocate future investments to better meet my goals and risk tolerances?
  9. What can I do to make sure I stay loyal to my values and goals?