Emergency funds and emergency preperation | Your stories | Discussion forum

GS said

How many of us have sufficient cash in paper money on hand to weather a bank/credit card outage of more than a few hours?

I am a firm believer in having all my money working for me and hate not being fully invested. But, I do have $1000 in $20 bills in the safe in the basement. A major power failure (think Northeast Power Blackout of 2003, North American Ice Storm of 1997) or an evacuation (think the Mississauga Train Derailment of 1979) can cause chaos with the financial industry.

My stash used to be in $100 bills but I recently thought that through and decided $20's made more sense.

If you were given 5 minutes to evacuate your home would you be able to grab a week's worth of your prescriptions (for those of us "old folks")? Do you have ready access to your insurance policy information? How would your family members re-connect with each other if you were scattered during a disaster? (The cell phone network could well be overloaded or inoperative.)

This is all meant to get you thinking.

Greg

Good thought but unless you are able to leave the problem area, even if you have cash, you probably can't use it as most businesses are computer driven.