Ahhh, 4.10% interest on my savings account feels good! Thank you to everyone who helped me see the light on this issue.

I have a question, however. I am under the impression that interest accrues daily and is credited to my account monthly. Hmmm. If I had $100 in savings today, would I have $104 tomorrow at 4% interest? And then would that $104 be $108.50 (or somewhere close) the next day?

That seems too good to be true.

Well, Kentucky needs to balance its budget. That means education funding is about to be cut. Potential staff layoffs, hiring freezes, and other such wonderful things are on the horizon. Letters and memos have already been flooding through the state everywhere from community colleges, to state universities, to high schools: funding is being cut.

I pride myself on being an advocate of the free market. If a company can't compete, it shouldn't receive any help. The people who work in those careers should move on to more productive positions in the economy.

I may be faced with that now. The claim is art, business, home economics, and PE will be cut. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that the 800+ students in my high school are going to receive English instruction unless there are the same number of English teachers as there are now. I guess I'm trying to say that I'm 70% sure that I'll have a teaching job this coming fall.

I don't like those odds one bit. Maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe the last thing on anyone's mind is cutting English positions, but I'm the new guy. Other teachers there have houses and kids and tenure.

As I said before, I'm an advocate of the free market. I'll move on if I have to, but I'm not going to fib: it's going to hurt a bit.

This is why I save money. This is why I can't imagine living paycheck to paycheck. I currently have three month's living expenses saved up. With the three months of summer that I'll still have paychecks and insurance IF I don't have a job next year, that's at least six months of living expenses. I could feasibly have ten months in my emergency fund by the time next August rolls around.

It may seem like I'm blowing things out of proportion. I'm just saying that I see a storm coming, and I'm going to be caught right in the middle of it. I stand by my 70% chance of having the same teaching job next year. If I don't get rehired, I'll have plenty of money saved up. I'll easily find employment somewhere else.

Like I said, though, it's not going to be painless.

Does anyone here have experience with Wesabe?

In lieu of my needing to tap my emergency fund to pay for car repairs, I called my bank to make sure that money would instantly be available in my checking account as soon as I transfered it to checking via online banking. They said it would be. Then, it popped into my head to check the interest rate on their savings accounts.

SHE SAID THEIR SAVINGS ACCOUNTS GET 0.5% INTEREST!

What!

0.5% interest??????

Is this normal? I was under the impression that interest rates should at least be 2%.