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What's your current financial buffer?

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pcgeek11 said:
I'm saying with NO Change in lifestyle.... Not going deep in debt, not living off credit cards. Millionaire was a stretch. I still doubt the statement of 3 - 4 years with No Change in lifestyle.

Rent / Mortgage
Insurance
Utilities
Food
Clothes
everything no change.
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you doubt it based on what, exactly?
 
A good while. I would strongly consider not tapping retirement even if I started to default on house payments. Would be worth looking into further but in general if you file for bankruptcy you can keep your 401k, so I'd rather the bank and credit rating get smashed than tap it.
 
About 1.5 years or so. With cuts in lifestyle, maybe 3. Digging into retirement might buy me 12 go 15 years (with cuts).

Edit: I was not including any sort of unemployment or assistance in the figures. Adding any of that in would stretch the time out some.
 
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1 year easily with no income and no change to my spending. 2 years+ with unemployment, a severance package, and lowering my spending.
 
A few years (at least 3) even without my pension/401K/investment.

Not joking or braging. I am single, healthy, don't smoke/drink/gamble/have bad habits and live in low cost of living area. Everything is paid for, I don't have any debts. If I continue with the same living standard, I would be able to survive at least a few years.
 
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of course, the government has that deal where you can't get foreclosed on for 2-3 years, so it sounds like you only have to pay your utilities and cell phone bill these days and they'll take care of the rest
 
Three months and it took me over a year of depositing whatever I had left after bills. If I didn't have tuition loans, I probably "could" stretch it out to 10 months, but I don't ever want to experience that situation.
 
tzhu07, you have to realize that Anandtech is filled with techy geeks. We tend to have much higher incomes, more education, and much greater savings than the average person. My wife and I are engineers with good jobs, paid off our house (early 30s for me, late 20s for her), and we live an inexpensive life (my car is 10 years old, hers is 12 years old, we have no cable TV and no smart phones, etc). Because we have almost no expenses and a sizable income, we can live a long, long time on what we have. If we dipped into retirement and investment accounts and eventually sold our house, we could live about 28 years. That assumes our investments match the rate of inflation during that time.

Of course, if we keep living happilly (replace our cars, keep our vacations, etc) I'd say we'd last 11 years. More if we collected unemployment or other handouts.

Why do you say we are still in a recession? GDP has been growing for well over a year to its highest point ever. Company profits are doing quite well (see Apple's profit on luxury goods). The job market isn't perfect, but it isn't that bad compared to average unemployment.
 
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Indefinite. Mommy and daddy will take care of me.

Also, wouldn't be a problem. I have 5 years experience as an admin assistant. You have no idea how popular male admin assistants/secretaries are... especially with male masters.
 
2-3 years maybe? That is including myself and my wife. She is 23 and I'm 27. And that is without changing spending by much.

It is called being financially responsible and you'll find a lot of that here. You'll also find people that can't handle money, but I'd wager a bet most of us aren't neck deep in debt due to the nature of the website.
 
About 7-8 months.

Not as long as I'd like. I was unemployed for a long time and blew through a ton of my savings that I've only recently started to rebuild.

If I moved in with my parents that would be like 2 years as I'd just have car insurance, student loans, and misc expenses. Single, 26, no other bills.

By the end of this year I'll be back to good (like 1 yr+ of savings).
 
Factoring in unemployment benefits, probably at least 2 years. After 2 years if I couldn't get a job I might as well just jump off a bridge.
 
With unemployment I think my net worth would actually continue to grow slightly even without any cutbacks. Without any income, 5+ years.
 
skyking said:
you doubt it based on what, exactly?
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Just that IMO very few people (as in nearly zero) have enough liquid assets to pay for ALL of their current expenses and could live just as they do with no change in their present lifestyle.

Everyone has diffent expenses, How much cash would it take for you to live just as you do right now for three or 4 years. Give me a number.
 
tzhu07 said:
I'm just curious. We are still in this recession.

Financial buffer meaning that if suddenly you (or immediate family as a whole) have zero income coming in, how many months would your current reserve of money last you?

Let's also assume that you cannot seek external help from other family members and friends and such.

Personally, I'm a single male without dependants. If I lost my income today, I could go on for at least 3 whole years before it becomes immenent that I find a source of income.
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~40K in immediate money (24-48hrs), roughly another 15-20K in other investments and assets that would take a bit to liquidate (401K, car, watch etc)

Asking about your burn rate assuming your habits don't change is pointless, as your habits change by the virtue of lower income/budget constraint.
 
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