[usnavy_233]

Well,
May I'm just young and naive but I look at it this way:

I'm Active Duty and have VERY good job security.

Medical and Dental are covered so there won't be any costly emergencies on that front.

I'm 25 and have always been on the aggressive side.

I plan on buying these two funds anyway, as long-term investments, so it makes since to me to use one of them (or part of both) as a partial emergency fund.

I will have a couple grand in a high interest savings for anything that pops up.

I have thousands more available on a M/C just in case I need more than a couple grand.

My game plan would be to save about $2500-$3000 in HSBC, then use most of it for the initial purchase of the fund. After that, I'll stock the HSBC back up to $2000-ish. Then I'll start a monthly contribution into the fund. I'll repeat the process for the other fund after a few months of stocking HSBC back up.

So basically, I'd have two dedicated retirement accounts and two very well respected mutual funds that are aggressive and have proven to do well over the last 5-10 years. In addition to this I'll have $2K+ in HSBC, and $7K+ on the M/C. Now, 9K+ is just a hair shy of 4 months of living expenses for my family and me. I'd have almost a full month in HSBC and then right at three more on the M/C. I'd already have the money to cover the M/C amount in the mutual(s) if I ever needed it and unless the funds had an outright horrible first year (and it would have to be HORRIBLE to offset my monthly additions) I don’t foresee a big problem there. And of course, the amount in the mutual(s) would continue to grow with each year.