RetireJapan

Hi Everyone,
My wife and I have about ¥1.5m in a emergency fund.
My wife has absolute no interest in investing in the stock market, my question is where is the best place to hold the emergency fund that give us easy access and any kind of a % return.
Thanks in advance.

Well, the purpose of an emergency fund is to have access to it when you need it, so we keep some of ours at home in cash (after experiencing the earthquake and no power for a week) and the rest in a normal bank account. No interest.

I use a normal bank account. If you happen to have an 'extra' bank or PO account, using that might help keep this separate psychologically, but it's also not hard to look at your balance and remember (in this case) that 1.5M of it is for emergencies.

edit: My wife keeps some money at home, but I'm not completely comfortable with that. Tho as Ben says, it could be important. I'm a cash person (virtually never use a card), so I usually pull more cash when I only have 10-20k left in my pocket.

Same here.
Not really comfortable with having that much money laying around the place.
Too easy to access and always the possibility (however small) of a breakin.

I keep mine in a 2-week term deposit at Shinsei. It gets slightly better interest rates (although it's still absolutely crap), it also has the benefit of bumping me up to a higher customer level, giving me more free transfers. While it means the money is not instantly accessible, I'm sure I can hold out for at least 2 weeks if need be.

Thanks Tony.
That's what I'm looking for.
Anything is better that keeping it in a shoe box!

Tony wrote: ↑Thu Jan 18, 2018 9:39 pm I keep mine in a 2-week term deposit at Shinsei. ... I'm sure I can hold out for at least 2 weeks if need be.

I used to do that. But 2 weeks is actually pretty long if you suddenly need to access it for an unexpected expense, or in my case opportunity. That term deposit pays 0.03%. Not really worth it, now I just keep it in the normal account.

Rakuten Bank offers 0.1% when the account is linked to their investment service (doesn't need to actually invest anything from what I can tell).