<prompt> Human: Essentially, I keep about 6 months worth of expenses in cash. This comes out to about 10k between all of my checking and savings accounts. I have 3 credit cards, which I believe have a total limit of roughly 5k between all of them.I have a reasonable chunk of student loan debt. I think I already know the answer here, but Im mostly just wondering what peoples opinions are - does it make sense to dumb some of that cash against my debt and use my credit cards as part of my emergency fund? I have a pretty stable job that I dont really see going anywhere - I dont really ever expect to be out of work against my will.  <response>: A credit card is an easy way of increasing your purchasing power, but it is in no way part of your savings. When you have a cash emergency fund, you use that cash to pay for your emergency. The fund is depleted, but your normal budget is unaffected.When you use a credit card and forgo the cash savings, you take on debt that you have no way of paying off. Your budget is already allocated to other things. 