Moving On To BS3

Well, we are still plugging along.

We have been approved for our refinance, we're just waiting to get our closing date. Our new mortgage will be a 15 year mortgage for $240,000 at 4.5%. This will cover (pay off) our Home Equity Loan and get us "debt free except for the house". Yay!

We will then move on to Baby Step 3 - save 3 to 6 months of living expenses as our Fully Funded Emergency Fund.

Here is what I come up with as our bare bones monthly living expenses:

Auto Gas: $200.00
Auto Insurance: $120.00
Grocery: $400.00
Home-Cable/Phone/Internet: $150.00
Home-Electric: $180.00
Home-Mortgage: $2,250.00
Home-Oil: $350.00
Home-Trash: $22.00
Personal-Braces: $100.00
TOTAL: $3,772.00

If I round up to $3,800 and plan to save enough to cover 6 months, that would be $22,800.00. I didn't include COBRA insurance payments (and I really don't know how much that would be) but I also didn't count on receiving "unemployment" money (which I also really don't know how much it would be or how long we would receive it for) - so I'm hoping those 2 will cover each other and cancel each other out?? (Anyone know more about these things?)

You might also notice that I left our cable/phone/internet rather high at $150 a month, but I figured we'd need the internet for me to continue my on-line business and for my husband to job hunt, and I figured we would want the cable as our only entertainment. (I fear that if we were to cancel it we might snap and go back into debt.)

Miraculously, we are expecting a large tax refund (even though we changed our withholding last year, guess we need to change again), and a large commission check in May and July - soooooo, we could actually have our FFEF by this July!!! This is amazing to me!!

This would mean that in just a few short months we could actually move on to Baby Steps 4 and 5 - and not a minute too soon as my oldest daughter is 12 and we need to really focus on college savings.

So, I'm feeling pretty optimistic tonight.

How did you all figure how much to save for your Emergency Fund?