> and what are you going max out your cards?

No, that's what the line of credit is for.

Maximizing your savings/investments isn't a bad approach when your young as every $ made ads cumulative value over time. I wouldn't recommend it when you have a family.

I feel that having a certain amount of physical and liquid cash assets is almost mandatory for basic financial survival. I use credit cards for most purchases('selling' my data to the card companies for reward points, too), but cushioning matters.

If life were 100% predictable, and I never had to worry about a sudden expense, or a bill being higher than expected, or gas/grocery prices rising, then I'd totally be down to invest my entire net worth and live off of a portion of my paycheck, maintaining minimum balance in my checking account, and sweating bullets whenever the market dips.

I went through several weeks of unemployment last year while I was between jobs. I was fortunate enough to receive the covid+standard unemployment payments, but still had to supplement that with cash from my savings to skim by. The alternative would have been to break my lease to live with my parents, incur bad credit, potentially have my car repo'd, etc. It would have set me back several years, and wrecked my self image.

I've never had an emergency fund because I purchased my first home as soon as I could with all my salary going into my savings account which also served as an offset account with the full amount offset against my mortgage to keep the interest down, so I had access to my savings whenever I needed it & when I didn't, the full amount would be used to reduce the interest on my mortgage repayments - in effect maximizing the full amount of my savings.

Since the demand for programmers has always been good wherever I've lived I've always opted for higher paying contracting gigs since I was never concerned about job security, i.e. before kids, I'd most likely be more risk averse and look for permanent roles after starting a family.

After I paid off my mortgage my expenses came down and after saving ~6 months of living expenses (easy w/o rent/mortgage) was able to take the leap to quit my FT job and go off on my own to create a commercial product which I worked on tirelessly until achieving my financial independence goals.

The closest I'll get to that for a while is when my car payments finish, in about 18 months. I should have 2 complete months of my gross salary saved and liquid by then, so I can justify putting an extra $200/mo to investing, and use the remaining $100/mo for spending, to account for cost inflation and such. Naturally, that first month of no-payment will be used for wasteful celebration.

I still have some student loans, but am quickly approaching/may have already reached Zero Net Worth(hooray!) when everything is totaled up. Buying a house would be a smart move, but I'd rather hold off on that to let the market cool down, and try to find a partner who would share it with me.

can you explain more about what an offset account is?

Sure, found an explanation at https://www.mortgagechoice.com.au/home-loans/home-loan-featu...

thanks!

The problem is the line of credit may be inaccessible when you need it most.

Emergency fund should always be first but adjusted for your age and obviously cost of living. No kids and living with parents? Sure, invest anything you make.