>Not liquid, doesn't count for this purpose. It takes 72 hours at most for me to liquidate shares and for it to show up in my checking account. That's liquid.

>Not liquid, doesn't count for this purpose. It takes 72 hours at most for me to liquidate shares and for it to show up in my checking account. That's liquid. It's a layered approach: 0-interest checking for day-to-day expenses (i.e., regular cash flow), low interest savings for a cushion (i.e., anything surprising that absolutely needs to be funded within 72 hours), and everything else in productive investments. The cushion means you rarely ever touch the investments, so it grows happily over time, but it's still easy enough to get to just in case. Nothing expensive about this security at all, regardless of interest rates.