Money market account for emergency savings
Depends on how urgent your need for the emergency savings might be. If the money market account allows you to get your money in the same amount of time as the savings account then there is no real downside, but if the account takes a few days for you to access and you need your money sooner then you probably shouldn't. Also money market accounts DO give more interest than most savings accounts, but the interest rates are generally still pretty low, so it might be an improvement, but probably not a huge one "So long as you have complete, virtually instant access to funds through checks, debit card, or ATM transaction, then yes it would be a better option than a ""vanilla"" savings account.   If it's in a brokerage account that you would need to process a transfer and potentially wait a few days for everything to settle, then I would just keep it in savings. The amount earned in interest isn't worth the extra hassle.  A compromise might be to keep a few thousand in a savings account and the rest in a money market.  That way you earn some interest and still have instant access to enough funds to cover most emergencies." Most emergencies are less than 1,000 in nature.  As such I would keep at least that amount in a checking/savings account at the bank from which you pay your bills or can get cash from.  This amount may increase so you can avoid low balance fees, or because of the nature of your life style and income. Beyond that, you can search for yield.  I personally like online savings accounts like Amex Personal Savings, Ally or others.   Money market accounts will work equally well.  There you can keep the bulk of your emergency savings and large purchase savings.  Keep in mind you still won't earn much.  A 40K emergency fund will only earn you $38/month at Ally. "From a quick look at sources on the web, it looks to me like Money Market Accounts and savings accounts are both paying about the same rate today: around 1%, give or take maybe 0.4%. I suppose that's better than nothing, but it's not a whole lot better than nothing. (I saw several savings accounts advertising 0.1% interest. If they mailed you a check, the postage could be more than the returns.) Personally, I keep a modest amount of emergency cash in my checking account, and I put my ""savings"" in a very safe mutual fund. That generally gets somewhere from making maybe 3% a year to losing a small amount. Certainly nothing to sing about, but better than savings or money markets. Whether you are willing to tolerate the modest risk or the sales charges is a matter for your personal situation and feelings." I think it's only a choice of terminology.  Typically with a money market account has check-writing privileges whereas a savings account does not. In terms of rates, this blog has a good list of high interest yield savings accounts. http://www.hustlermoneyblog.com/best-bank-rates/ Disclosure: I am not affiliated with this blog.  I just think it is a good resource to compare the rates across different banks. "I'm not a fan of using cash for ""emergency"" savings. Put it in a stable investment that you can liquidate fairly quickly if you have to. I'd rather use credit cards for a while and then pay them off with investment funds if I must. Meanwhile those investments earn a lot more than the 0.1 percent savings or money market accounts will. Investment grade bond funds, for example, should get you a yield of between 4-6% right now. If you want to take a longer term view put that money into a stock index fund like QQQ or DIA. There is the risk it will go down significantly in a recession but over time the return is 10%. (Currently a lot more than that!) In any event you can liquidate securities and get the money into your bank is less than a week. If you leave it in cash it basically earns nothing while you wait for that rainy day which many never come."
"Well.... If you have alllll your money invested, and then there's a financial crisis, and there's a personal crisis at the same time (e.g. you lose your job) then you're in big trouble. You might not have enough money to cover your bills while you find a new job. You could lose your house, ruin your credit, or something icky like that.  Think 2008. Even if there's not a financial crisis, if the money is in a tax-sheltered retirement account then withdrawing it will incur ugly penalities. Now, after you've got an emergency fund established, things are different. If you could probably ride out six to twelve months with your general-purpose savings, then with the money you are investing for the long term (retirement) there's no reason you shouldn't invest 100% of the money in stocks. The difference is that you're not going to come back for that money in 6 months, you're going to come back for it in 40 years. As for retirement savings over the long term, though, I don't think it's a good idea to think of your money in those terms. If you ever lose 100% of your money on the stock market while you've invested in diversified instruments like S&P500 index funds, you're probably screwed one way or another because that represents the core industrial base of the US economy, and you'll have better things to worry about, like looking for a used shotgun. Myself, I prefer to give the suggestion ""don't invest any money in stocks if you're going to need to take it out in the next 5 years or so"" because you generally shouldn't be worried about a 100% loss of all the money in stocks your retirement accounts nearly so much as you should be worried about weathering large, medium-term setbacks, like the dot-com bubble crash and the 2008 financial crisis. I save the ""don't invest money unless you can afford to lose it all"" advice for highly speculative instruments like gold futures or social-media IPOs. Remember also that while you might lose a lot of your money on the stock market, your savings accounts and bonds will earn you pathetic amounts by comparison, which you will slowly lose to inflation. If you've had your money invested for decades then even during a crash you may still be coming out ahead relative to bonds." You're in a good spot: making good money with prospects for that to continue for the foreseeable future. Even if/when you quit dancing nursing pays quite well. Leaving all that money in a savings account is a mistake. At a minimum: Open an IRA account at any of the discount brokers (Schwab, Fidelity, etc). Roth is fine to start, once your taxable income goes up consider switching to a traditional IRA. Max out your IRA every year. Invest in low-fee index funds. There are frankly too many options these days, but an S&P 500 Index fund is almost never a mistake. Open a regular taxable investment account where you can invest additional money. Leave some cash/savings for emergencies. But if you do #3 you can always sell some investments in a cash emergency. Yes, it may lose money in the short term, but given your steady income, not a huge concern. I think if you read all the investment advice out there, you'll see a familiar theme along these lines. Your nest egg will grow considerably when you invest. A checking account is instant access. It can be tapped via check or debit card.  A savings account is supposed to be used to accumulate cash for a goal that is is longer term or for an emergency.  Many people need to separate these funds into different accounts to be able to know if they are overspending or falling short on their savings. In the United States the Federal Reserve also looks at these accounts differently. Money in a checking account generally can't be used to fund loans, money in a savings account can be used as a source of loans by the bank. An even greater percentage of funds in longer term accounts can be used to fund loans. This includes Certificates of Deposit, and retirement accounts. Determine how much you are going to save first.  Then determine where you can spend your money.  If you're living with your parents, try to build an emergency fund of six months income.  The simplest way is to put half of your income in the emergency fund for a year.   Try to save at least 10% of your income for retirement.  The earlier you start this, the longer you'll have to let the magic of compounding work on it.  If your employer offers a 401k with a match, do that first.  If not, consider an IRA.  You probably want to do a Roth now (because you probably pay little in taxes so the deduction from a standard IRA won't help you).   After the year, you'll have an emergency fund.  Work out how much money you'll need for rent, utilities, and groceries when you're on your own.  Invest that in some way.  Pay off student loans if you have any.  Buy a car that you can keep a long time if you need one.  Go to night school.  Put any excess money in a savings account or mutual fund.  This is money for doing things related to housing.  Perhaps you'll need to buy a washer/dryer.  Or pay a down payment on a mortgage eventually.   Saving this money now does two things:  first, it gives you savings for when you need it; second, it keeps you from getting used to spending your entire paycheck.  If you are used to only having $200 of spending cash out of each check, you will fit your spending into that.  If you are used to spending $800 every two weeks, it will be hard to cut your spending to make room for rent, etc. (To be clear, IRA accounts are just wrappers, and can contain a large variety of investments. I'm restricting myself to the usual setup of investment in the stock market.) So, let's say you have $5000 in savings, as an emergency fund. Of the top of my head, putting some of it into a Roth IRA could backfire in the following ways: The basic principle here is that the stock market is not a good place for storing your emergency cash, which needs to be secured against loss and immediately accessible. Once you're happy with your level of emergency cash, however, tax-advantaged investment accounts are a reasonable next step. Short the Pound and other English financial items.  Because the English economy is tied to the EU, it will be hit as well.  You might prefer this over Euro denominated investments, since it's not exactly clear who your counterpart is if the Euro really crashes hard.  Meaning suppose you have a short position Euro's versus dollars, but the clearing house is taken down by the crash. "Considering that I can't find anything on Chase's web site referencing a ""Money Market IRA"" I suspect that this is a type of account that they aren't actively supporting anymore, but aren't forcing you to cash it in.  I would call Chase to find out for sure, however. That said, a money market is not a good investment if you are looking for any kind of growth.  They are basically a savings account that pay (currently) a small amount of interest.  You can get much better return from other low-risk investments.  You can rebalance periodically if you want to keep a certain amount of ""cash"" available." You can also create a CD ladder (say 1/3 in a 6 month CD, 1/3 in a 1 year CD, 1/3 in a 2 year CD) with half of your emergency fund money.  You always want to leave some of it in a liquid account so you can get at it immediately without any interest penalty.  CD's provide higher interest than a savings account.  By staggering the lengths of the CD's, you give yourself more options, and can roll them over into CD's with higher rates (since interest rates are soooo low right now) as the CD's mature.