Quote Originally Posted by Lord McBuckethead View Post
If you have enough in your personal investment accounts, it will continue to grow and is accessible if something crazy happens.
The problem is that it isn't available when something usual happens. If I could do the last 25 years over again, I would have banked $10k in a regular savings account. The adage when I came out of school was "always have 2 months salary in the bank." Well fresh out of school in the mid-90s, my salary was only $2,500 a month. That wasn't nearly enough to have when my transmission blew, or the refrigerator died, or the compressor on the AC went out one August, and I didn't have enough monthly cash flow just to absorb the hit. Those smaller emergencies led to credit cards, and that credit card debt let to a tighter monthly cash flow - which made it harder to save and harder to handle the next thing - let alone when something real bad happened like a hurricane hit and shut my wife's business down for a month. 401ks are great long term, but life's realities require you to be more liquid than they allow you to be. Bank $10-15k before you start investing. That liquidity will save your ass a lot of interest in your lifetime.