To me savings is liquid cash that you have on hand. It is an emergency buffer account. Every month (or whenever I get paid) since I have been employed or my wif

To me savings is liquid cash that you have on hand. It is an emergency buffer account. Every month (or whenever I get paid) since I have been employed or my wife has I have had money taken out of our checking account and put into another account. It doesn't really matter that its savings or checking account but that I can get immediate access to the account. When the account has gotten too big we just apply some of the money elsewhere (which is not really hard). I understand how the truly impoverished unable to save but I'm sort of disturbed to read so many here post that they think their 401K/Roth IRA is an emergency cash account. I actually once tried to sell stock to get liquid cash. Perhaps it was just Scottrade sucking but it took a significant amount of time... so much so that I had to use my emergency buffer (savings account). Its been awhile since I have tried so maybe things have changed.