Got my wife to sign up for a high-yield savings account with me. We'll have an emergency fund in 8 months

My wife and I are in our mid 20s. We make pretty good money, especially combined, but have never been good at saving. We don't live above our means and always have money left over at the end of the month, but we don't save it. We go on vacations with it, buy stuff we don't need, and give it away.<br><br>This past New Years Eve (2023), we were at a dinner with some friends and they brought up the topic of finances and money. All of them were doing better than us. I think it made my wife realize that everyone else around us was doing better with money. So, she started reading The Intelligent Investor, then she listened to Dave Ramsey, then she went on Chambers, etc. She's been on a kick to do better since New Years Eve.<br><br>But, the thing is, I don't agree with what she thinks is the best way to save. She thinks we need to be saving 50% of our income and not buying anything that isn't necessary. I knew that if I just gave in to what she wanted to do, I'd feel miserable. So, I did a lot of reading on my own. I read The Automatic Millionaire, The Simple Path to Wealth, Your Money or Your Life, and I listened to The Stacking Benjamins podcast. All of these put me more in the camp of "save as much as you can, but enjoy yourself along the way".<br><br>I knew I had to convince her that we can save and still live a little. So, I made a spread sheet. I listed out our income and all of our expenses. I subtracted our necessary expenses from our income and showed her how much we had each month to play with. Then, I showed her different possibilities of what we could do with that money. We could save 50% and put the rest towards debt or we could save 20% and have the rest to do whatever we wanted. I showed her how much money we would have saved in X number of years at different savings rates. Then, I took the savings rates and showed her how much money we'd have in different buckets. We could divide the savings into a vacation account, a house down payment account, an emergency fund, and a "fuck you" fund. I showed her that, if we save 33% of our money, in one year we'll have gone from basically nothing saved to over $77,000 saved. $15,000 of that would be for vacations, $30,000 would be for a house down payment, $15,000 would be our emergency fund, and $17,000 would be a "fuck you" fund. None of this was a guarantee and it would take work, but it looked a lot more promising than where we were one month ago.<br><br>So, she signed up for a high-yield savings account with me. She chose Discover Bank. We're going to put all of our money into our bank checking account and transfer the amount we need for the month into a joint debit account every month. Then, we're going to divide our savings into the four buckets I mentioned above. We're going to put 22% towards a house down payment, 22% towards a "fuck you" fund, 17% into an emergency fund, and 39% into a vacation account. I used to travel a lot before I met my wife. I want to get back to traveling more. I want to go to every state and every national park. I want to visit every MLB stadium. I want to go on a road trip across Europe. I want to go on an African safari. I want to walk the Camino de Santiago. I want to do a lot. I don't want to have to wait decades to do it. My wife isn't as excited to travel, but she's on board.<br><br>If everything goes as we've outlined, we'll have $20,000 in an emergency fund in about a year. I think it'll take us about 8 months. At that point, we can keep saving the same amount and start using what we're already saving to afford vacations here and there. Or, we can increase the percentage we're saving and cut back on the vacations. We'll figure it out when we get there.<br><br>I'm excited to not be stupid with my money anymore.