We are working on getting our 3-6 month living expenses savings built up. We are pretty much starting from nothing, I'm 27 and a one income family so it's taken this long (sadly) to get it rolling.
How long did it take you to build yours up? I'm trying not to feel discouraged, and we are really disciplining ourselves to get there!
eggplant / 11861 posts
Before I went on Maternity leave with DS, DH worked a lot of overtime and we banked the money! He is a LEO so it is pretty good money!
Took him working 2-4 extra shifts a month for about 5-6 months to save 3 months worth of our income for bills
pomegranate / 3355 posts
I feel like this is a tough question to answer. It'll come down to how you are paid.. meaning if you can get OT, if you are salaried or if you are paid commission.
At my job I can't get OT and I am salaried so I feel like it would take longer just bc I can't "generate" anything extra...
DH's job can get OT and he also gets commission. So in essence he can generate addl income.
Also depends on how much commission you get paid.
For DH and I it took 2 months to save up a 3 month fund. That would cover all our bills/expenses without cutting anything back or out.
cantaloupe / 6669 posts
We were plodding along so very slowly for about 5 years until we sold our first house and were able to use a good chunk of the proceeds from that to finally get our emergency fund to the amount we wanted. I think it is definitely slow-going without some kind of extra income!
watermelon / 14467 posts
Same as @daniellemybelle, we were plodding along until we got a sum of money from my inlaws. I think that if we hadn't gotten that, it would have taken us maybe a year though. We were a double income family with no kids when we got our emergency fund set up. Now we just maintain it.
pear / 1955 posts
Kind of similar to previous posters - we saved ours before we had kids, so we've just been maintaining it since then or adding a little bit as our expenses go up (ah-hem, double daycare coming up!) After we paid off our student loans, we just transferred the payment we'd been making on those to our emergency fund, so it was topped off within 6 months or so.
hostess / wonderful grape / 20803 posts
We are older, but my husband was in surgery training for so long and earning so little! We had a good emergency fund saved up and then we had an unexpected $40,000 tax bill which nailed us. So we had to start over again. We did it by saving one of my paychecks every month and by putting DH's end of year bonus money directly into savings.
Since both gals will be in school in the fall, maybe you could take on a side job to help jump start the fund?
GOLD / wonderful apricot / 22276 posts
@winniebee: LO2 will only be in school 9 hours a week 
for the next year then 12 hours a week the following.
pear / 1521 posts
If we had to start from scratch right now with one LO in daycare it would take us a year and that would be a bare bones emergency fund where we would have to really cut back on non-essential expenditures. However, I am the breadwinner and it is extremely unlikely for me to lose my job so I am ok with a smaller fund.
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