How much emergency cash does everyone keep on hand?

I’m a firm believer in keeping a pretty good chunk of cash around and it has come in very handy for hurricane evacuation in the past. This cash also gets used as a buffer to keep our budget under control. Example: An unexpected auto repair cost well over $700.00 a couple of weeks ago. I used the stash cash, replaced said cash within a couple of weeks and thus relieved my wife of the credit card stress or dipping into our savings account. When Mama’s happy, everyone’s happy.

I started putting away cash years ago to be spent at the beginning of hurricane season for supplies. This habit has evolved into year round preps for storm season and a healthy hunk of cash.

I keep $4000.00 in 20’s, $600.00 in 10’s, $300.00 in 5’s, and $100.00 in 1’s. This cash is stashed in a couple of places around the house and vehicles. I don’t have a safe so hiding is my only option. I’ve also accumulated a couple hundred bucks face value of pre –65 silver coins but that is for another discussion.

How much do you keep set aside?

I keep $75.00 in ones, $25.00 in fives and a role of quarters in my BOB along with a pre-paid phone card and $20.00 transit card. All sealed up in a vacuum pack bag so I am less tempted to dip into it.

Cameron

I keep a reserve of around £100 in my wallet, and roughly similar amounts in odd caches around and about. I don't keep huge amounts because I am happy to dip into savings for things like car repairs.

Living paycheck to paycheck as I do, I keep about a dollar in my wallet for emergencies and rely on a stash at your house olddude. LOL

Seriously though, I keep a couple of hundred bucks around, hidden. I don't keep a whole lot around though, fearing that if disaster strikes, and it strikes my home, it may very well be lost.

If you're going to keep that much around olddude, please consider getting a fireproof safe, something that can be bolted down, something that can be found should anything happen to your home.

Man that sounded dire... Ugh. Of course I don't want anything to happen to your home or anything. Sorry about that!

It's cool, Nico. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />You are correct I should get a safe. With your tongue planted firmly in cheek, you also bring up another good point for disscussion, I'm sure many of us have heard it. The old, "I'm coming to your house" line.

I always keep a good amount of cash in my home?s safe and some in my deep-core-PSK (actually roughly 1000 EUR).
I don?t have any sorrows about carrying a lot of cash with me (the last mugger I?ve meet only asked for my watch but didn?t get it <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />). My bigger problem with emergency cash is that a lot of shops here in Europe actually don?t accept bills bigger than 100.- EUR, sometimes 50.- EUR cause they fear to get counterfeit money. So it comes to a question of storrage space how much useable cash you can carry in a PSK/BOB/...

Molf

My wife and I have his and hers BOBs. In each one I've put $50 in singles, a roll of quarters and a Rite in the Rain card with the phone and PIN numbers for two different calling cards. That's about the extent of cash we keep around. I could probably stand to pad the cash on hand a bit.

I don't think I could keep 100 pounds in my wallet. My belt probably couldn't hold my pants up...

Our contingency cash-on-hand is designed to cover three possibilities: a temporary interruption in our ability to access bank accounts/credit cards, a local disaster/emergency during which we would remain in our home, and a local disaster/emergency requiring temporary relocation away from our home.

Don't keep a huge amount on hand: $250 cash in twenties, tens and ones, and another $250 in smaller denomination traveler's checks.

During a stay-at-home situation, the most significant expense would likely be gasoline, which our cash stash covers if banks aren't immediately accessible. We maintain sufficient supplies to sustain our other day-to-day needs for a month or longer: non-perishable food, water, batteries, propane to cook and power lanterns, and other necessities.

The $500 cash-on-hand is also designed to fund 2-3 days travel in the event of a temporary relocation away from our home to one of a half-dozen out-of-area destinations (relatives and friends). Once that's exhausted, we'd rely on the ability to electronically access funds in one or all of three bank accounts, each with geographically diverse institutions having multiple branches. And then there's credit cards.

I figure that if an "event" overshadows these resources, then we've got much bigger problems to contend with.

I have no idea how much cash we keep on hand in the house, as DH takes care of it. However, this thread reminds me of a recent sad event.

DH and I had a garage sale and got rid of a bunch of stuff that was just taking up space. Of course, all transactions were in cash. At the end of the day, DH counted up the money and I privately wondered what I could buy with the money. Then comes the sad part. DH put all that beautiful cash in the safe and I didn't get to spend any of it. You see, most of the cash that we had in the safe was hundred dollar bills left over from an overseas trip, which wouldn't be very useful in a local emergency. And our bank account has never been in a position where I felt comfortable withdrawing a large sum of cash just to put in the safe. Sigh. We put all this effort into getting a garage sale together, and now we have pratically nothing to show for it. All those lovely ones and fives and tens ended up tucked away. However, it was a decent way to accumulate some emergency cash in small bills without taking money away from anything else.

-Kuovonne

What's your address again?

Take the first left at the shrimp boat docked at the southernmost point.

Yeah, Yeah, that's it. <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Um, actually I did spend some of the garage sale money on a new boonie hat. Plus a little more on grommets and snaps to improve the hat.

It's now a very nice hat. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

-Mark

We keep some vacuumed sealed in the fireproof safe (helps to prevent us for using it unless it is an emergency) so it is relatively accessable.

Just recently I got my wife one of those "money tubes" (don't know exactly what to call it). They are brass or silver and are 'keychains". when you take out the split ring the inner tube comes out. In that, you can easily roll up ie. a twenty. It is GREAT !!! It isn't really meant to be the TEOTWAWKI money supply but it has definitely helped her out of some situations. You can get them at (I think) Miles Kimble or something like it for <$8.

WHere did you get this money tube thing? <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Living where we do and having seen the effects of Katrina, we normally keep $300 in cash stashed during hurricnae season. If we think there is a serious chance we will have to evacuate or not have access to a bank for a while, we will increase the cash to $500 - $700. Other than that, it sits in the bank.

For personal emergencies, I always keep a $20 bill and several ones sandwiched between two dog tags on my key ring. Use a rubber silencer to keep 'em together. Other than band-aids and my Squirt, that has been the most used EDC item that I carry.

Cliff's post reminded me of something. I bank at small local bank. I asked them about getting into my savings during an evacuation should a Katrina style hurricane run up the Keys. The best they could come up with is using an ATM card and running around to different machines or online access. My question is - how does online acess help if I don't have an account at a bank in my bugout location?

I'm thinking of moving my savings to a national or regional bank that has a branch in my usual retreat. Anyone have any thoughts on this issue?

Most smaller banks now have outsourced their holdings to larger banks anyway so chances are your account info is in a major data center and accessable somewhere.
My wife worked in HR and during Katrina they were still direct depositing payroll into peoples accounts so they could continue to withdraw or use a debit card somewhere to get what they need in the town where they evac'ed to. The people with mailed paychecks were in trouble because they couldn't provide addresses or proper identification saying they were who they were in the new location they were at.
Its still best to keep cash on hand, I've managed to save up a little bit in my EDC just for those situations.

It depends on how robust the online access is. For example, if it has a bill pay system (which I suspect most do) you could go online and "pay yourself" or a friend at your new location and then cash the check. You can also make sure that your bills (like insurance premiums and cell phone company ;-) are paid via the online bill pay system. Of course, this is for more long-term situations, and you could probably do as much with a checkbook. If your online access allows transfers to other banks, you could transfer money to a the account of a friend who banks at your remote location.

Online access varies from bank to bank. I have an account at BofA that has really robust online capabilities. I also have an account at a different local bank that has pretty lousy online capabilities (so bad that I actually prefer writing a check to using those online capabilities).

-Kuovonne

Lazermonkey......let me check the catalogs and I'll get the info for you....may take a day. thanks. CJK

I found it...if the link doesn't come through then go to www.mileskimball.com and search for the "hide a cash key ring" in their search box. Type it in just as it shows in the " " or you'll never find it.

http://www.mileskimball.com/shopping/pro...amp;keyword=key

hope this helps.
CJK

Thanks CJK that is very cool! <img src="/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> How many bills does it hold?

My spare cash on had got me out of a small emergence if you could call it that. I was at a birthday dinner at a kind of fancy place. As we set out I was thinking I would pay for my portion via my credit card... well when I looked at the bottom of the menu it said the restaurant did not split up bills. Luckily I had my spare cash in my man purse and was able to pay my share at the end of the night.

That's good info from Eugene and Kuvonne. I would add one other suggestion, in the interest of creating redundancy (and you know how we all pride ourselves on that <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />).

If you have credit card(s), it would be wise to memorize, or encode in some fashion and carry in your wallet, the PIN number required to get a cash advance/withdrawal through an ATM.

Doing so gives you one more layer of access to cash in an emergency, and provides back-up in case your bank does go off the grid.

I learned this lesson the hard way (and should've known better). Was far south in Mexico; needed cash; went to a small bank to get cash using debit card/ATM. For some reason, it wasn't working (and I'm not sure I completely understood the explanation, given my mediocre Spanish). What the manager did convey was that I could get cash from the ATM, using one of my credit cards. All well and good, but since I'd never used them for that purpose up 'til then, I didn't know my PIN numbers. And the bank wouldn't/couldn't do it manually. Fortunately, got by until made it to major city.

Suffice to say, lesson learned.

Dan

I have put my pin in my cell phone address book, using a dummy name and phone number with pin imbedded in it.

I kind of did the same thing. My school ID number is writen on my birth day in my cell phone planner.

I work for a large bank now and we resell a lot of lockbox and item processing services to the smaller banks.
Another option is to go to a Lowes or Home Depot and buy something small and take out extra cash using your debit card if the networks are working in your area but not where your bank is located.
After September 11th a bunch of new banking regulations came into place. No one bank can have more than 10% of deposits, all banks over a certain size must have redundant data centers separated by x number of miles, etc. The bank I work for just built two new main data centers and is consolidating all the old small ones down to the three or 4 main large centers with a nice meshed network between them.

Lazermonkey.....
I only put a single twenty into it but I'm certain that you could probably fit more. Obviously if you roll up a 'c' note you'd have the $100, but it is a large denomination. I haven't played around with it much yet (it is on my honey's key chain), but you should at least be able to 'squeeze' in another bill.

I got it for just about the same reason you gave in the story. It's more the Oops factor than true "survival" but either way you could be "stuck" in a bad way. <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> I wanted to make sure she had some cash that wasn't always remembered but always there. Ane it takes a little bit to get it out so you're not tempted to 'dip' into it for ie. a soda or chocolate bar....though a chocoholic without chocolate IS a true emergency <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Glad it helped.

Again thanks CJK .If you get the chance to try and cram another bill in there then please let me know. And maybe you could try old vs new bills just to see if that has any effect. You could even try to trim the bills down for a little extra room.
Anyways, just some ideas incase you get bored with some other survival project. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for the thought about the 'old' vs 'new' bills...hadn''t really thought about that. I'll give it a go and get it posted. Hopefully soon.

A brick of .22LR; plenty of 9mm, .38 spcl; .357 magnum; .45 ACP; .30-06 ammo and some 12 guage shotgun shells will quite possibly be the currency of back-to-the-future. Their values should be close to penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half-dollar, dollar and above.

I think that I will stick with cash, or food/water if we have enough, for trading materials. I have some reservations about trading ammo with someone who has an unloaded gun. Question one: Where did the first batch of bullets go? Question two: What is my security situation like if he starts loading up?

In response to the original posters question: 10 each of 20's, 10's 5's and 1's hidden in each vehicle and each BOB. One roll of quarters in each vehicle and each BOB. Plus usually $150-200 of "everyday cash" in various places (like my money clip).

This is from a fella who put up some Katrina evacuees. I've copied the paragraph applicable to this cash subject, the link is his full story.
Katrina

"The "bank problem." This bears consideration. I was at my bank this morning, depositing checks I'd been given by my visitors in exchange for cash. The teller warned me bluntly that it might be weeks before these checks could be credited to my account, as there was no way to clear them with their issuing banks, which were now under water and/or without communications facilities. He also told me that there had been an endless stream of folks trying to cash checks on South Louisiana banks, without success. He warned me that some of these local banks will almost certainly fail, as they don't have a single branch above water, and the customers and businesses they served are also gone - so checks drawn on them will eventually prove worthless. Even some major regional banks had run their Louisiana "hub" out of New Orleans, and now couldn't access their records. I think it might be a good idea to have a "bug-out bank account" with a national bank, so that funds should be available anywhere they have a branch, rather than keeping all one's money in a single bank (particularly a local one) or credit union. This is, of course, over and above one's "bug-out stash" of ready cash."

I apologize for drifting the thread, but...

Interesting and insightful; contains useful advice. Nothing like firsthand accounts from those who've been there. But, in the interest of accuracy, with regard to statements made by the teller:
.
As most of you know, those funds are FDIC insured up to prescribed limits thus the checks would only be "worthless" were they drawn on accounts outside the limits (and households can have coverage greater than $100K limit, depending on how accounts are held).

To go a bit further, – and I say this acknowledging that emotions were high – I question the wisdom of the teller spreading speculative doom and gloom anyway. That contributes nothing to the situation.


My .02 FWIW.

Dan

Yep, that line didn't work for me either. There may be a time lag but worthless - nope.

No offense, but not on your life man. Trading ammo for anything to a person of an unknown quanity ain't happening here. Cash, fuel, food maybe. Ammo no way.

He may use it against me. Like the middle east countries ready to use weapons we sold them against us.

Lazermonkey.....I tried to fit 2 bills into the tube but they didn't fit. I did find a very small 'issue' to deal with. I opened the tube to get the money and the top came out and the money stayed inside....fixed it by putting a small piece of string around the bill while rolling it up so that you can EASILY get the money out without difficulty. Unfortunately I don't see how even trimming the edge of the bills would help.....there only seems to be room for a single bill in it.

Is that container waterproof? It doesn't look it. I had a similar one from
Magellan which wasn't either. Later I found Sunshine Products who have a modular kit approach that is water proof. I should think you could also use the matchcases that have been discussed here.

No the 'hide a cash' isn't waterproof. It has a hole in the bottom, that I didn't know what it was for until a bill got stuck in the tube. You can push the bill out if that happens.

A couple of potential problems with hiding cash at home are theft and fire. I've heard of hiding cash inside your freezer, disguised as a package of food or something. It should stand a better chance of still being around if your house burns. The other option would be a fire safe, but if it's a small one a burglar would simply take it with him.

I did a google search on "hidden valuables home" and got lots of hits on safes disguised as furniture, etc. There are also books on how to hide things.

Regarding ATMs - anyone here remember the tv movie The Day After (1983) with Jason Robards? One scene showed people attempting to withdraw money from an ATM, only to find that it displayed the "out of service" message.

During the American Civil War, soldiers would probe the flower beds and gardens around houses with their ramrods, looking for buried valuables. Don't hide stuff in the obvious places!

I carry a pill safe or pill caddy on my keyring. I bought it at a local drugstore or pharmacy for a few dollars. It has an o-ring on the screw top, so it should be pretty much watertight. I carry two folded and rolled 20 dollar bills and a single Tinder Quick firestarter in it. It's a tight fit and the bills tend to stick, but they come out with a couple of taps. These pill caddies are on ebay.

Also, some nylon wallets or billfolds have zipper compartments where you could hide a few bills.

Having a little cash on hand has come in handy more than once for me.

Take a look at using a leather belt with a hidden pocket. It should be large enough for 4-5 bills single stacked and up to 10 double stacked. Or place bills in the hidden pocket or brim of you hat. Place one or two bills under your shoes's footbed.

All kinds of locations to stash cash in the vehicle or at home.

While small bills are fine and necessary don't forget to include a few larger bills like 50s and 100s - literally more "bang for the buck!"