Online savings accounts take 2 days to transfer to your personal bank checking account. In emergencies that may be too late and can squeeze you between the dreaded late fees and NSF fee nightmare. You need emergency stash.

A good place to park it is a money-market account at your local credit union. Make sure you put it in a place that is least making enough interest to keep up with inflation and are easily accessible.

Once you have that emergency fund fully funded, start looking around and save aggressively for retirement! Think about opening a brokerage account at Ameritrade or some other discount broker. Naturally you wan to invest in something safe but in the meantime they pay more interest on your money than the bank does. The online brokerages have a wealth of free information to become familiar to further your financial education.