This always felt like banker advice to me. That’s an insane percentage of cash to have sitting in an account that’s earning less interest than the rate of inflation.

First, if you're getting less than 3% on your savings account rate, find a better bank (or even better a credit union).

Second, you will find that there are times in life when having cash you can lay your hands on immediate solves problems that nothing else can. An extreme example: if you need to get bailed out of jail or retain a lawyer right now, the stock you have in your portfolio is going to take more than 24 hours to liquidate and get transferred into your checking account you can pay the court or a bondsman. More than likely its closer to 48 for the market to open to close your position and perform a wire transfer to get the cash in your hands. A less extreme situation may be a desperate car repair or a dental root canal.

Lastly, you really don't want your emergency money in volatile stocks. Even an boring S&P500 index fund is a bad choice, why? Because there are times of financial crisis that can drive down the value of your stocks or mutual funds. Its entirely possible that is the time when you're going to need cash to float on. Selling at the bottom of the market in a crisis is a bad place to be. This was many people's situation in 2007/2008 during the financial crisis where the market tanked the second worst in US history, and people were losing their jobs left and right.

S&P500 returns over the last 100 years:

source

All those red years would mean your desperately needed emergency fund is worth a fraction of what you put into it.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 hours ago

Those graphs make it look scary but clearly the stock market had trended upwards. If you're using your emergent fund within a year or two of putting the money in, I would argue it's not an emergency.

Bail is a weird thing to be planning for and I don't think you have the timeline right on how quickly bail is set.

But my main point was to simply put money aside at even the smallest amount rather than make excuses.

Putting it in an investment account rather than a savings account sitting right next to your checking account is too easily to access. The withdrawal delay can be a feature.

The balance of the emergency fundis not something one should be seeing or thinking about as often as one sees and thinks about their bill payment account.

Even if one is only comfortable using a saving account, I would still suggest using a separate financial entity.