# Emergency fund: how much to actually put aside > "Six months of expenses" is useless advice until you know what your expenses are. Here is how to work out your own number instead of copying someone else's. "Save six months of expenses" is the most common piece of financial advice online and among the least useful. It does not say which expenses, does not say where the money comes from, and does not explain why six. ## Count survival costs, not spending The fund has to cover a period without income. In such a period you do not spend what you normally do — holidays, restaurants, cinema and anything postponable all disappear. So count **survival costs**: rent or mortgage, utilities, food eaten at home, commuting, medicines, insurance and the minimum payments on your debts. Nothing else. That figure is often 30–40% lower than ordinary monthly spending. It turns the target from unreachable into realistic. ## How many months depends on how fast you would find work The number of months is not universal. It depends on how long you would look for a new source of income: - **Employment contract, common profession, large city** — three months is usually enough. - **Narrow specialisation or a smaller town** — six. - **Self-employed, irregular income, a single client** — nine to twelve, since there is no notice period and no unemployment cover. - **Two incomes in the household** — you can go lower, because losing both at once is unlikely. ## Example: from spending to a target A single-person household spends 5 200 a month. Survival costs are rent 2 100, utilities and internet 350, food at home 900, transport 200, phone and insurance 150, medicines 50 — 3 750 in total. A permanent job in a field with plenty of local openings: three months, so 11 250. The "six months of spending" rule would give 31 200, almost three times as much. Saving 600 a month, the first target takes 19 months, the second more than four years — which is exactly why so many people never start. ## The first threshold: one monthly payment Before you think in months, put aside the amount of your single largest payment — usually rent or a mortgage instalment. That is the first threshold that genuinely changes something: from then on a broken washing machine or an unplanned dentist visit stops meaning reaching for a credit card. ## Where to keep it The fund must be **available within a day** and must not lose nominal value. That rules out shares, long-dated bonds and anything you would have to sell at a loss at the wrong moment. What remains are savings accounts and short deposits. Interest is secondary here — the fund is not an investment, it is insurance. Keep it in a **separate account**, not the current one. Money sitting next to your everyday balance disappears without being noticed. ## Fund or debt first? The classic question. In practice: **small fund first, then debt, then the full fund.** Put aside one or two monthly payments so you do not return to debt at the first breakdown, then focus on repayment, and come back to building the full fund once the expensive obligations are gone. Clearing debt with a zero fund usually ends with the first unexpected expense rebuilding the card balance. ## When to use it and how to rebuild it Decide in advance what counts as an emergency: losing income, repairing something you cannot live or work without, medical costs, a sudden family trip. A sale, a bargain or a holiday does not. A line drawn beforehand is easier to hold than a decision made in the moment. Using the fund is not a failure — that is what it is for. Afterwards, go back to saving the same amount as before, before returning to other goals. The order matters, because the next emergency will not wait for the balance to recover. --- Źródło: https://ordiarion.com/blog/emergency-fund-how-much