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If you're in this situation, get yourself an account at an online bank (ING Direct, Everbank, etc.) with an automatic savings plan, then create a dedicated savings account for emergencies and label it Emergency Fund (important!). If there's no automatic plan, just set a portion of your paycheck to be direct deposited into that account. Just put in $50 or $100 per paycheck.

Once the account balance gets to a level you're comfortable with, you can divert that excess monthly savings into CDs and other safe (less-liquid) investments, that you can periodically cash-out to build up your emergency fund for bigger, longer emergencies. The added security will help you sleep better. At least it did for me.