Snowflaking your way to an emergency fund
Posted
May 15 2008, 07:57 PM
by
Karen Datko
Rating:
"Lazy Man" noticed that some personal-finance gurus have a phrase they can call their own. David Bach has the latte factor. Dave Ramsey has the debt snowball. "Paidtwice" has snowflaking. Not to be outdone, Lazy Man at Lazy Man and Money has invented one -- "snowforting."
"I realize that Lazy Man and Money is going to nowhere if I don't coin a term and/or champion a cause," he wrote. So, what is this snowforting, other than another PF blogger's fascination with winter?
"Snowforting is the practice of building an emergency fund from little bits of money (snowflakes) from savings wherever you may find them," he explained. "The more snowflakes that you add to your emergency fund, the stronger your snowfort becomes."
This is an excellent idea, and one that Lazy Man has executed well. His family has an emergency fund to cover expenses for eight months. They will increase it to provide for a year.
Other bloggers like the new word (even if it really should be two). "Great term. Consider yourself a financial guru," Frugal Dad wrote.
Lazy Man isn't the only blogger to add to the lexicon recently. Steve at brip blap came up with "wealthstreaming" -- developing a variety of income streams or, as paidtwice might say, "snowflaking for income." "I like to think of all of these as faucets pouring into the same sink ... and the goal is to make the water pour through in such quantities that the drain can't process it all and the sink overflows. Neat, huh?" Steve wrote. (Lazy Man said he should have called it "wealthflurrying.")
