For the “minor emergencys” I think a thousand for the family would do up to a week. If you can still get cash soon and have supplies already planned for this. A generator can easily go for up to a thousand in an “emergency”.

Terrorist attacks or other HUGE disasters…well I don’t think most people could have enough cash. So as many bills as you can save but smaller the better but its hard to put $500 in ones in a wallet.

If I had a money wand I’d have one years living expenses saved in a savings account and 3 months living expenses on hand cash plus supplies.

Also, I think limiting yourself to your insurance policy is limiting yourself in an emergency. So what if the insurance policy only covers $200.00? Is the insurance company going to be there instantly when my family needs food and shelter? No, I don’t think so. Better to risk losing a small amount of money than the ability to care for my family in an emergency.

I think $1,000 – $2,000 stashed in a fire safe in a very clever spot is the safest approach. I also think that you never know what emergency might hit. Someone used Hurricane Katrina as an example of a circumstance where there was nothing to purchase. What if that is NOT your situation? What if you do have items to purchase and used Katrina as an excuse NOT to have cash on hand. Be prepared either way!!! Think, think, think, think.

There’s only my wife and I, and we keep around $500. I don’t use cash that often, but I know even if just the power went out (like in the Northeast Blackout of 2003), it’s hard to do anything with only $20 in my wallet.

I think the opportunity cost of holding $1000 or less in your house is negligible compared to the benefits of having it during an emergency. And it’s only like 3 dollars a month anyway. Big deal. But you do get peace of mind.

You have a moral obligation to prepare your family. Do not be too poly-annish about bad things happening. Be prepared!!

But as Americans, we do not believe our systems will ever go down, for a prolonged (7 days or more) period.

Keep at least $250 per person in your household for the unfortunate events that may strike your family one day.

Personally I make it a practice not to think of emergency supplies as “investments.” Different financial tools have different purposes. I know a bank teller is not a financial adviser but I’d think they’d still know the difference.

The inflation rate is keyed to the GDP (gross domestic product). It is not grounded in individual economic reality. We don’t buy everything in our households over and over again year after year. Even if we did, some prices go up, some go down, and some stay the same–and with the latter, that effectively means their prices have decreased too, in real dollars. A $35 whatchamacallit in 1960 that’s still a $35 whatchamacallit in 2008 is way cheaper than it was back then. Anyway, so it would seem that most of the time, inflation primarily affects us with those products we must buy over and over again. With some product categories, though, you can get around that. You can buy used, you can obtain for free, you can borrow. The GDP, after all, focuses only on new goods.

So if you’re holding off on putting together an emergency fund in savings, or being too risky in your investments because someone said “inflation” to you, that’s pretty unfortunate and unnecessary. And a cash stash is NOT an investment vehicle any more than an emergency savings account is. It may be a useful exercise to periodically go over what the cash stash or emergency fund is supposed to cover and make sure that prices haven’t changed so much that you need to sock more money away–but that goes back to what Joe Dominguez said about consciousness moving faster than inflation.

Then came Hurricane Ike.

Do not leave it up to your debit card to help you bug out of town if disaster strikes. If the power goes out all over your town, none of the ATMs will work. Banks don’t use emergency generators to keep them going; even if they did, it’s likely the ATMs still wouldn’t work because something along the network would probably be out of service as well.

And never assume that you won’t face a certain kind of natural disaster just because you never have. Not to be melodramatic about it, but we’re exhibit A in that regard. With climate change storms are going to happen in increasingly odd places. Faultlines can open where there were none previously. Even volcanoes have the habit of occasionally appearing out of nowhere. Again, kind of melodramatic to contemplate, but the point is you *don’t* know what will happen–better safe than sorry. (Given the favored hiding place of a cash stash–no pun intended!)

A very astute comment.

Do I expect to use any of it? Well, the food and water came in handy during the recent flooding (no, the house didn’t flood…our neighborhood has drily rode out four floods in the recent past that left most of the rest of the county underwater…including all the grocery stores and most of the roads). The rest is still just being held in reserve.

I’ll reevaluate the cash situation when I see what happens with the election this year. The only situation I can see where it’d be truly necessary would be a local terrorist attack. If the Democrats win, I’m doubling my reserve. If the Republicans win, I’ll probably put most of it back in the bank…although I’m still keeping all the other supplies.

Recently I went tent camping with the family and the car could barely hold all the stuff we wanted to take. I think I should work through this and imagine what an emergency load would include. OTOH, I think that getting outside the disaster area is the main thing. After that credit cards should work.

Even in South Carolina, my mother went through an ice storm and couldn’t go anywhere and had to use a kerosene lantern to stay warm for days.

…what a sad world this is coming to.

I think that your point about a potential run on the bank, with tons of unprepared people trying to get cash, is a good one. I’d much rather be on the road or buying what I need rather than trying to get my hands on some money.

As a single person I keep 100-one dollar bills at home for an emergency (working on increasing). I remember two occasions in the last three years that my national bank’s entire ATM network went out of service out of service due to technical reasons. So I will assume for my purposes, that there is a probably a greater chance of ATM and equipment failures during a disaster. In addition, many types of disasters are not forecasted ahead of time, which means the unprepared are counting on a disaster or emergency occuring during traditional banking hours, Monday thru Friday, 9am to 5pm. Anything happening outside of that time frame and the unprepared are S-out of luck!

Also, it appears that people have forgotten that banks make money by charging transaction fees AND HOLDING large sums of YOUR money, and your funds are not always immediately available for withdrawal. Murphy’s Law could imply that an emergency would be a great time for a bank to hold YOUR money, especially when all the other unprepared people will be trying to make withdrawals at the same time.

In addition, one must remember that bank employees are only human. What makes anyone think that in a emergency situation banks would be open for “business as usual” and that bank tellers and employees would actually show up to work. Remember the people you regularly depend on for services, probably live locally and will be experiecing the similiar conditions. I don’t know about you, but chances are, in a real emergency, the last place I’m going to be is sitting at my desk. More than likely I will be checking on my family, securing my home and possibly getting out of town, as will the bank tellers and other non-emergency personnel.

Lastly, I agree with many of the planning steps in the attachment posted at comment #51. Also, don’t assume that you will be at home or close to home in an emergency or disaster, which is why I also have some basic neccesties of food, water and clothing in my car. Part of you “cash on hand” should be money at home and money on your person.

Food, batteries, lights, radio, maybe a small generator.

Water: check out waterbob.com (no affiliation) to store up to 100 gallons in your bathtub (more than any water heater)

Anyone without power or water already has a reserve of water of fifty gallons or more in their water tank.

If I were involved in a disaster that I thought was going to last a week or more I think it would be time to change places for a while. That’s what an emergency fund is for and if I can’t get to my money within 100 miles of the disaster area (my home) things are probably so bad that a few hundred dollars saved back in cash really isn’t going to help much.

If it is the type of disaster that destroys your home a lot of the plans people have stated here won’t help much anyway. Again, you will have to change locations and access your money from another place.

Keeping this in mind, I try to limit cash on hand to a minimum. I keep a reserve of $200 (in $5 bills) and a weeks worth of food/water in a backpack. This seems to be more than enough to keep a single person afloat for a week in case of disaster. I consider the food/water supply to be far more valuable in a disaster than cash. Really, I look at the cash supply as a way to get the heck out of dodge if there is a disaster (gas, lodging). It’s pretty hard for cash to do you any good when people are looting anyway …

Before I became a finance professional, I had a job as a teller. It is amazing how many people keep their life savings underneath their matress and take their paychecks in cash. I hope that the people in this fourm are smarter than this and do not keep obsene amounts of cash on hand. It’s certainly not the way to wealth or financial security.

I keep $200-$300 in cash in the house. I keep track of how the cash is spent in an account in Quicken so I know when it needs replenishment and where the money’s gone — and also to pre-empt “unauthorized withdrawals.” Besides the teenager’s activities, it is also handy for service people who prefer payment in cash. Or when my wallet’s empty and I don’t have time to get to an ATM.

But many of the posts raise excellent points about keeping cash on hand for emergencies. While hurricanes and earthquakes may be limited geographically, power outages can happen anywhere. I think it wise to increase my home cash for true (i.e., non-teenager-related) emergencies.

When payday came a few days later, my employer (which had the same bank) could not issue paychecks. I will NEVER let myself get in that situation again. So, I do keep a stash of cash in the house. It could be another hurricane, which you do have warnings for, but it could also be an unexpected emergency (tornados, terrorism, etc.). I know from experience that you just can’t always count on ATM’s or even banks.

1. I have food and water for 3 days (our typical flood length) on hand.

2. I have our emergency folder complete with a small unused credit card ($500 limit), passports, $500 cash, insurance documents, spare phone chargers etc etc ready to go.

3. In the event of a cyclone (hurricane) we make the decision to stay or go based on the category. 1 or 2 we stay, 3 or above we go. Grab bag, emergency folder, dog, kids, hubby, gone.

Thanks to the wonders of underground power, water and phones, even when flooded in we have the necessities and our town doesn’t stop running. It’s more the town gets cut off than the town itself flooding – although this week was a little hairy….

My father does the same thing at their new house, except he didn’t put it in a pipe. I finally got him to compromise and put some in the bank. Now, he’s ‘only’ got about $5K in the house. He’s all cash, anyway, but I’m still leary of a fire in the house. I’m a big proponent of 1000 per person. Probably over kill, but watch Jerico and then you’ll decide what you’re comfortable with

As for places not having electricity during a power outage, you’re right. So no CC/debit. However, they COULD be open during daylight and cash would be the way to go.

I’ve learned the hard way that freak things can happen to knock out the power for a couple of days – I’ve been in a few major hurricanes and a really freak wind storm that was devastating. And there are two things you need when the power goes out – cash and gas. So I keep my gas tank half full, too – learned that the hard way – gas pumps don’t work when the electricity is out. But $200 would do my husband and I well for a few days until the power came back on. Usually 3 days is about the most you’ll have to go in a large city without some areas getting power that you can access for necessities.

As for worrying about theft, I really don’t. If someone breaks in my house and demands money I’m giving them the $200 – it might just be enough to make them leave and to keep me alive in the process – after all I live in the city with the highest rate of larceny in the country.

I guess its a personal choice. I suppose if you wanted emergency money stored in your house, but not cash, you could always do travelers checques. If someone steals them they can’t cash them. But if something happens and you need money you can use them.

http://www.frfrogspad.com/disastr.htm

If you think your plastic or electronic machines will be worth something when the banks go down or when the electric goes off, you’re not being very safe.

Keep enough cash and supplies to get you and your family to a safe area and enough to wait out whatever has driven you from your home. And if you’re worried about it getting stolen, you need a safe that’s fire proof and bolted to the floor.

So I admit, I am not a fan of leaving cash around the house–however there have been a couple times, especially during 3 day holiday weekends where I have gone to an ATM only to have it empty–it had run out of cash. And I never really thought about an emergency like Katrina but I don’t live in a disaster area.

If I had a family, for peace of mind, keeping a few hundred in a safe place isn’t a big deal–but I think as one poster mentioned, keeping water, canned food (with can opener) and a flashlight is probably more important.

Granted my situation could be a little different being a young single twentysomething, but the only cash I have on hand is in loose change and a couple of twenties in my wallet. I feel safer having it in in a megacorporation’s books in all of these disaster scenarios you guys are talking about. I guess if I need a tank of gas that badly I’ll hock my watch.

One day I woke up to go to work to realize that my purse was missing — I had left it in a taxi cab the previous night. Without a bus pass, ATM cards, a cell phone, or any small cash, I wouldn’t have been able get to work on time (no car) or call my boss, but the $100 enabled me to catch a cab and not miss my very important morning meeting.

When we lived in a hurricane area, we tried to keep closer to $300 on hand during stormy seasons since ATM machines and any sort of electronic transaction machine could go down for days at a time following a storm.

We are young and without kids, though, so I might imagine that others may need/want more on hand.

Why I keep such a large amount has to do with the fact I was robed at gun point at an ATM two and half years ago.

I won’t go into the details, but I approached an ATM in my car. The light which should have illuminated the area had been shot out with a pellet or bb gun. When I pulled up, I was ambushed by two men who held a gun to my head. I was forced to make multiple withdraws before I shifted the car into gear and sped off. Needless to say, I want to avoid the ATM as much as possible!

after you reach safety, your normal emergency fund should cover living expenses in your safe area until the crisis is over.

We also keep about $100 in the car at all times. The money stays hidden from sight in a small compartment in the car. This is enough to be able to pay for a tow truck or buy gas if the credit/debit cards are unavailable for any reason. To us the money in the car is much more important than the money in the house. We figured we’d be far more likely to find ourselves in a situation where we’d need cash for food, gas, emergencies, etc. while on the road than at home.