Your numbers
Rent/mortgage, utilities, groceries, insurance, minimum debt payments. Skip streaming, eating out, and discretionary — those would stop in a real emergency.
Your situation
Your emergency fund target
$21,000
5 months × $4,200 essential expenses
One income means one point of failure. Five months covers most industry layoff-to-rehire cycles.
Current coverage
0 mo
Under one month — start here
Fully-funded by
Sep 2029
40 months at current pace
After-target gain
$450
Redirect monthly once target is hit
Show the mathExpand →
Target = monthly essential expenses × target months (set by situation). Gap = target − current savings. Months-to-target = gap ÷ monthly contribution.
Target months sit at 3 / 5 / 7 / 9 depending on income stability. Dual-earner households can go lower; single-earner and variable-income earners should hold more. Industry volatility shifts the floor up, not down.
Park the emergency fund in a high-yield savings account (see our HYSA finder). It must be liquid — any delay defeats the purpose. Don't invest emergency funds in stocks.
How we size the target
Situation, not a blanket rule
Dual-earner households need less; single-earner and variable-income need more. We ladder 3 / 5 / 7 / 9 months based on how risky a job loss actually is for you.
Essential-only expenses
Target = essential monthly expenses × months. Streaming and eating out don't count — those pause in a real emergency. Rent, utilities, groceries, insurance, minimum debt payments do.
Over-saving is a problem too
Cash sitting past target loses to inflation. Once you're fully funded, redirect new contributions to investing — the calculator flags this explicitly.