They cited one supreme incentive for their financial feat:

"I was TRAPPED nine months in a black-hole-of-hell, soul-killing office FULL of petty, SCUMMY back-stabbing creeps because I didn't have enough cash handy to quit. Our boss was a drunken Anti-Christ!!!! I learned to save so I could finance a job hunt. Now I have $8,000 in three-month CDs. Tell your readers life is wonderful when you have enough money to jump a ship infested with rats."

Wider job choices
And mergers and downsizing make job switches necessary even for those not toiling with Satan's rodents.

"Having a large savings account that you can fall back on can make quite a difference in your decision-making process," explained a 35-year-old woman who was able to shop for a job she loved, thanks to her rainy day treasure.

The e-mails came in response to our November story, "Many save for a rainy day, but most Americans say they'll have to borrow when a financial storm hits." Based on a Gallup poll conducted for Bankrate.com, the story found that two-thirds of respondents said they would have to borrow -- or couldn't even get -- $5,000 in an emergency.

Those younger than 35 said it took them about two years to save six months of living expenses. But middle-aged respondents said they had a much tougher, slower path.

"With two kids in college and a mortgage, I feel like saving our two months of emergency funds over a period of six years is an accomplishment," one man wrote.

Brilliant deductions
Most savers had a certain percent automatically deducted from their paychecks and deposited to high-yield credit union accounts, company stock dividend reinvestment plans, 401(k) plans or short-term bond funds earning about 8 percent. No one regarded the booming stock market as an appropriate venue for stashing cash.

Rainy-day saving demands discipline. Some readers forced themselves to write down every expenditure, including 65 cents for breath mints. "But I quit telling my wife to do this after she threw my little budget book at my head," a reader said.

Hiding the cash
Ten readers say that they keep rainy day savings in accounts that their shopping-addicted spouses don't know about -- and their spouses approve of the arrangement.

Others use only cash, standing in line at the bank to make spending money harder to get, never visiting an ATM, never applying for debit cards. They limit their credit card use to emergencies, such as sudden illness, that they can't pay for out of pocket.

The simpler the method, the more likely the success, according to readers, for some used tricks that proved a wee bit too tricky:

"I put my $3,000 bonus check in an account in an obscure out of state bank," one 32-year-old wrote. "Now I can't remember the name of the bank. I hope I get a statement in the mail soon."

-- Posted: Jan. 5, 1999