Question about savings for future maternity leave and emergency fund
Hello,
I apologize in advance if this has been asked before (I had trouble finding anything with the search function).
My wife and I will probably be trying to have a second child within about a year, maybe a year and a half. For the last kid, we saved up enough money in our savings to cover everything not covered by our state and her employer while she was off for 4 months. This time, I'm also going to take paternity leave for 8 weeks so am setting aside for that on top of what's needed to cover what's missing from her paycheck too.
Long story short: I calculated that we'll need about $7,400 to cover what's missing from our paychecks during that time. We currently have $1,800 in our savings toward that $7,400 amount (and we also have $4,000 sitting in our savings, probably to be used to pay off debts incrementally). Would it be wise to put that $1,800 and all future set-asides for maternity/paternity leave into the emergency fund account I've already created at Vanguard? There's nothing in it now. I was planning to do 90% SGOV, 10% money market. Just asking because I'm worried about early withdrawal penalties, taxes, etc. if we end up needing it sooner.
TL;DR: should my family's future maternity/paternity leave savings be put into a vanguard emergency fund at 90% SGOV, 10% money market, instead of left in our savings account? Plan to be used in about 1-1.5 years.