Best thing my first wife did for me, back when we were still just dating—she made me set up an automatic savings plan that threw $200 into an investment account every month. EVERY MONTH. No exceptions, no excuses. Even when I was unemployed for nine months after I got out of the Navy. Often that $200 was minor, but sometimes it would have been nice to have that money available. Too bad. Emergencies only!
Eventually (this started in my late 20s) that fund refinanced the mortgage wife #2 and I had on our house, allowing us to pay it off after 13 years; it paid for a whopping big bill for healthcare for my FiL; it paid off our mortgage entirely when it got sold to a company with an awful record, so it made sense to buy our way out; and finally, what was left (almost all of it, because we “paid ourselves back” after withdrawals) got folded into our retirement funds.
Besides being useful, just having an emergency fund gave me (later us) peace of mind during hard times. We DID have money if we needed it… so was the latest trouble an emergency, or just an “emergency”? Well… let’s try to muddle through, for now, okay? And we have the fund if things get worse. 🤞
We made it to retirement okay. 😊