How Much Cash to Stash
Oct 21, 2022
Keeping a cash stash in a secure place at home is good sense, ensuring essentials can be covered should power or internet go down, rendering cashless payment methods inaccessible. How much is enough? U.S. financial advice site GOBankingRates asked a range of experts for their advice.
Yasmin Purnell, Founder of finance site The Wallet Moth, suggests calculating how much would be needed to cover temporary accommodation, food and drink, medication and gasoline. Daniella Miura, Founder and Owner of Spark Financials, gave similar advice, saying people ‘should keep enough money on hand to get a couple of gallons of gas, pay for a delivery tip, or to help in unfortunate events.’
As a general rule of thumb, having access to $1,000 in cash at home would ensure you can at least pay for immediate expenses in the case of a national emergency.
Other experts echo the $1,000 figure, with Ryan McCarty of McCarty Money Matters adding that people could consider holding around 10 percent of their overall emergency fund in cash.
To keep that cash safe, the experts also emphasise people should carefully consider a secure place to keep it. It should be out of sight, locked away with key or code access, and somewhere it will be protected from fire or flooding. It is also important to ensure bills remain current, so checking and refreshing them as required is essential.
Make sure your safe is fire and waterproof to avoid any damage. [Also ensure] you deposit and replace the money on occasion so that the bills don’t get too old.