[Schneed10]

One more thing regarding cash management of your standard checking account and your "emergency nest egg".

To maximize the return on your nest egg cash, you should allocate it properly between your regular checking account and your high-interest savings account or money market fund. At the same time, you want to keep your life simple in this aspect. So I suggest this:

- Figure out what 6 months of expenses amounts too. That's your "nest egg" amount.

- Keep a minimum of $500 - $1000 in your checking account at all times. It will fluctuate up and down based on when you get paid and when you pay your bills, but at its low point the checking account should have $500 in it.

- Keep the rest in your nest egg high interest savings account, so that if you added the balance of your checking account and the balance of your nest egg account, they'd equal 6 months of expenses.

This does not need to be an exact science. But this basic rule of thumb will keep you from having to constantly transfer funds back and forth from nest egg account to checking account. At the same time, you'll be keeping most of your money in the high interest savings account, earning interest on the majority of your emergency stash.