Advanced options
Count essentials only: rent/mortgage, bills, food, transport, minimum debt payments, not the full lifestyle. 3 months is the standard floor, 6 for the self-employed, single-income households and anyone whose work is lumpy. It lives in easy-access savings, not investments: this money's job is being boring and there.
What The Emergency Fund Calculator Works Out
- 3-month fund: essential monthly outgoings multiplied by three. Count rent or mortgage, bills, food, transport and minimum debt payments, not the full lifestyle. A home spending GBP 1,800 a month on essentials needs GBP 5,400.
- 6-month fund: outgoings multiplied by six, the standard for the self-employed, commission-paid, single-income households and anyone whose work is lumpy. Dual steady incomes wear the three-month floor comfortably.
- Your plan: how far you are from the next milestone and how many months it takes at your monthly saving. A first buffer of GBP 500 to GBP 1,000 built fast beats a perfect plan postponed, and high-interest debt is attacked alongside rather than after.
- Your own target (advanced): any number of months, for example 9 or 12 for a contractor, with the shortfall and the time to reach it at your current saving rate.
- Lump sum (advanced): a bonus, tax rebate or windfall added to the fund today. It is counted in the plan and the coverage figure.
- Months covered today (advanced): what is saved divided by monthly essentials, so you can see the buffer in months of life rather than pounds.
- Interest the full fund earns (advanced): the target fund multiplied by your easy-access AER. The fund belongs in easy-access or short-notice savings inside the FSCS limit, never invested; its job is availability on a bad Tuesday.
- Share of take-home saved (advanced): your monthly saving as a percentage of household take-home pay, with the share essentials take alongside it.
- Saving more gets you there in (advanced): the time to your target if you added a chosen extra amount each month, against the time at your current rate. Past six months, the marginal pound usually buys more in pensions and investments than in cash comfort.