Emergency Fund Calculator

Three months is the usual floor and suits dual-income households with stable jobs. Six months is the standard recommendation. Nine to twelve months fits single-income households, the self-employed and anyone with variable or gig income — the calculator’s stability guidance walks through which fits, but the choice of months is always yours.

The spending that cannot stop if income stops: housing, basic food, utilities and phone, transport to work, insurance premiums and the minimum payments on debts. Subscriptions, eating out and holidays are not essentials — in a real emergency month you would pause them, which is exactly why the fund is sized on essentials rather than your full salary or full spending.

Either — they are the same number two ways. The rows are better if you are not sure what your essentials add up to, and they expose costs people forget (insurance premiums and minimum debt payments are the usual ones). The single total is quicker if you already track your spending; typing it overrides the rows until you edit a row again.

In an instant-access savings account, separate from your everyday account so it is not spent by accident, but reachable the same day a boiler or car fails. Not invested — the fund’s job is to be there at full value on a bad week, not to grow. Once it passes your target, extra savings can move to longer-term goals.

Start anyway, and aim first for a starter fund of one month of essentials — that already absorbs most everyday emergencies. The calculator shows the honest timeline at your current pace; raising the monthly amount even slightly shortens it more than people expect, because every month is a whole month off the date.

No — it is emergency borrowing. It works only while the lender keeps it available (limits can be cut exactly when times get hard), and it charges interest on top of the emergency. A cash fund costs nothing to use and cannot be withdrawn by anyone else, which is the whole point of building one.