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Money Mechanicsfrom The Payments Corner
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Emergency fund sizer

Find your 3- and 6-month safety-net target — and how long it takes to reach it.

Your essentials

A safety net is measured in months of essential spending — not your whole budget.

Rent, food, utilities, transport, insurance, minimum debt payments — the bills you can’t skip.
Optional — leave it at 0 if you just want to know the target.
How this is calculated

A common guideline is to keep 3 to 6 months of essential expenses in an account you can reach quickly. We multiply your monthly essentials by 3 and by 6 to get the two targets.

If you tell us what you can set aside each month, we divide each target by that amount and round up to whole months — you’re not “there” until the last deposit lands.

Start with the 3-month target. It’s the one that turns a surprise bill from a crisis into an inconvenience.

Starter goal · 3 months

$6,600.00

About 1 year, 10 months at $300.00/month.

Full cushion · 6 months

$13,200.00

About 3 years, 8 months at $300.00/month.

Even $300.00 a month builds a real cushion. Set it to transfer automatically the day you get paid, so you never see it in your spending account.

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