The greatest thing working to your financial advantage is this:

When you collect SSI or SSDI there’s no rush to get a job. There’s no reason to take any old job that comes along first.

This is because you already have income coming in in the form of SSI or SSDI.

While you collect these government benefits you can read the information I’ve given in the blog entries in the Career category of this blog.

See if any of what I’ve written makes sense to you as being a viable strategy for finding your dream job.

The government allows people who collect these benefits to have something like $3,000 total in a savings account and what’s called a burial account.

Having this money in an FDIC-insured bank account can be your first version of an emergency fund.

Once years ago when I did a public speaking engagement a person didn’t know what an emergency fund was. They thought that someone else gave you this money.

When they asked me: “Who gives you an emergency fund? Where does the money come from?” I was stunned.

Stunned because the person looked like they were older than I was.

Your car needs a new muffler. You go into a hospital for an operation. You lose your job. You have to move into a new apartment.

An emergency fund gives you the ready cash to pay for these things when they happen.

Though I’m no fan of Suze Orman (in one of her DVDs she reduced an audience member to tears) I agree with her on this advice:

Saving up 8 months of living expenses in your emergency fund makes the best sense.

In New York, Los Angeles, even in Boston and other high-cost cities:

If you live in one of these places I say: have at least $20,000 saved in your emergency fund.

In fact, if you ask me you should have tons of money in an emergency fund.

I don’t go by the common advice to have only 3 to 6 months of living expenses saved in an emergency fund.

The higher this amount of money is the better.

In the coming Money Monday blog entry I’m going to talk about having an:

It’s My Money and I’ll Do What I Want With It Fund.

Karen Ramsay was the original financial planner who wrote a book decades ago about budgeting in money to fund your passions in life.

More on this coming up.