Real emergency funds revealed

I love this topic! Keep it comin'!!!

my emergency fund right now is $660.00 and i have it in a high yields savings account. this is huge for me because im freshly 21 and live independent of my parents, and have had spending issues in the past. im hoping to get it up to $4,500 at some point because that's 6 months of my living expenses.

I have about 13K rn but I'd like to get to 16K... That would give me a full 6 months of expenses. I'm not saving into it too quickly just because I want to at least be putting in 10% to my retirement accounts... So that kind of slows me down on the emerg. front.. but I'm not too concerned. I do also have a 1k buffer in my chequing just so expenses can come in and out without worry of overdraft.

i'm freelance so things are really uncertain. I have about $160K liquid. I live very frugally, and if i needed to, my basic expenses are about $30K/year after tax if I go really lean. So i could last about 5 years or so with no other income coming in (though I'd probably be on benefits by then!).

My emergency fund is down to 6k, because of emergencies. Have 17k in my brokerage. 99% of it in income producing ETF'S.

the emegrency fund saved us when my husband got laid off for the 3rd time in 2 years

26:54 Hmmm... why does it sound like your finances are separate? Your emergency fund vs his emergency fund? I hope the both of you are financially supporting each other. Sounds like if he's out of money then he's out of luck, but you'll be fine though.😅

4:40 Be very careful with that. The emergency fund is there for a reason. It's not an investment. It's not there to have good returns. It's there to keep you out of a bad situation like having to go into debt or sell investments when the market is down to cover an emergency.

Sometimes things don't go as planned. Like planning to find new work in 2 months but it took 5 months.😅 Usually when it rains it pours. A job loss and a bad economy go together like white on rice.

It's one thing to hear about a situation and understand it. It's a other thing to experience it first hand. When you don't have much to lose it doesn't seems that bad. The more you have to lose and experiencing losing it or almost losing it just hits different.

i have 20200 in my emergency fund. I stopped completely contributing to it after i hit the 20k mark a couple months ago but i get 50$ every month from having it in HYSA. now my new goal is to contribute more into my Roth RIA. My first goal and one i try to be on top of is as close to zero debt as possible.

37:59 I did what she did. Paid off my law school loan and all debt while I saved. You can’t wait to save 😂 that’s too risky. Emergencies don’t wait until you’re debt free to happen. 🤷‍♀️ You can’t multitask even if it means debt gets paid off slower.

I started investing in 2020 while paying off debt. As of August 2025, I am debt free.

I don't understand why anyone would keep more than a few thousand dollars in a HYSA earning 3-4% when the rest could be in investments earning 10%. It doesn't take that long to transfer money out of a brokerage fund like Vanguard. And as long as the money has been there for over 1 year, there are no penalties on withdrawing that money.

Tires ect are a budgeting thing and not an emergency fund thing. Saving for a car/down payment is not an emergancy fund! I just realised that women financial channels are soooo annoying. We have people on here crying ect.. There is no crying in financial goals.

Mine is $13,545. It’s just my wife and myself at the moment, with a parsonage (wife’s a pastor and her work provides free housing). Once we start having kids or get our own home we’ll probably bump it closer to $20K for peace of mind, but we don’t spend much so we’ve usually got extra lying around so $13K has been fine for us.

We’re now family of 3. We are now on our 3 months worth EF. Its has been sitting on HYSA for 2 yrs, so I have decided to invest 1/3 of EF to Money Market Fund & Mutual fund.

Earlier this year, I came back from vacation to find my furnace had stopped working during a subzero Minnesota winter day. I had to replace a furnace within 24 hours. Thankfully, my emergency fund allowed me to cover a $9k expense without having to go through financing.

I have had a 30k emergency fund for years. Anything past that seems excessive so anything past that gets added to my stock investments. Last year I had the worst case scenario of having to change my boiler and well pump the same month which was in total about $14k. Had plenty saved to cover the expense and since have been able to replenish the fund back to $30k.

Wealthfront and Crew are FinTech companies not banks and do not have bank charters. People need to be careful keeping money with them because if they fail the FDIC will not save you. Marcus is probably ok because it's owned by Goldman Sachs which is a bank.

Just let people talk please

Car maintenance /malfunctions aren't actually emergencies... you may not know WHAT could happen, but you're guaranteed to have SOMETHING happen at some point and that means it's a sinking fund you plan for, not an emergency you dip into.

My emergency fund is sitting at $42.12 right now, but I get paid biweekly so i should be good until then

This may sound like too much but I have a $60k emergency fund. I probably could get by with half of that but peace of mind is worth it to me. I don’t have any kids, it’s just me and my pup. I’m 31. Total net worth (without home equity) is around $220k between investments & savings.

Can you do a video on what to do is your constantly denied opening a HYSA. And you can't get information from check systems.
Would love to hear how to recover from this.😊

❤thank you!

19:57 when i started working, thats what my father said. Make sure i have 1 year worth of salary saved up.

EF= 3 years close to retirement can’t guarantee short notice layoff and Trump stock market

My emergency fund is $150k. In 3 months I expect our home mortgage to be non existent. I was a retired widower but have remarried to a woman who makes over $500k per year; consequently, our situation may be an outlier compared most American households. I didn’t include my wife’s saving in the numbers.

Years ago I decided that I would not carry a credit balance and my EF goal was to have 3 times the amount of my anticipated immediate need expense. For me that was based on highest deductibles or medical emergency expenses.

Single homeowner, also a federal employee who has been furloughed multiple times therefore an emergency fund is essential. I've built a one year emergency fund in 3 mos increments, while I paid off all non-mortgage debt. It was initially about 25k in my HYSA and has been earning over $100/mo in interest. I also have separate new car fund, travel fund, and sinking funds.

Even better for your car’s air filters - I have K&N filters which clean out myself with every oil change. They will last indefinitely. I’ve also noticed that when I get my oil changed, they see my K&N sticker and filter and don’t try to upsell me on anything. They’ll check it out and just let me know if it needs cleaning.

I also found out more recently that they make HVAC filters too so I got one of those too. It’s a little more of an up front investment, especially the HVAC, but it’s easy maintenance and you never have to buy them again.

Bought my first home in December. I spent two years prior paying off my debt, and saving my income debt free. Saved up $20k and only had to use $4k with earnest, inspections, etc. Used the rest as an emergency fund for a years worth of expenses (mortgage, utilities, bills) that has now grown to $25k. I want to save at least $30-40k before spending money on fixing my home or upgrading my lifestyle within my means. I think it’s very important to have a fund that accounts for a years worth of expenses, car emergencies, and pet emergencies. Currently working on putting it in a high yield savings account for that money. Make your money work for you!!

Hey Leila why is the newsletter page showing NOT FOUND ?

i’m not entirely sure what that one girl is referring to as far as “finance” jobs because i’ve been in the banking corporate world for over 7+ years and banks are some of the hardest places to get fired from “for no reason” lol

I have a fully-funded 6-month emergency fund, plus a bunch of sinking funds for things like house repairs, vet bills, car maintenance and vacations. On top of that, the global megacorporation that I work for has historically given generous severance packages in the case of layoffs, so I could very likely survive for a whole year if I lost my job.

i'm working towards paying off my current debt of 1,965.77€ currently. I paid off around 52.42€ this month. It seems small but i'm happy i started. I'll treat this comment as accountability.
IDK how to go about saving more though, i've been putting very small amounts of money to the side but it doesn't feel enough yet

Im shocked (not really) that no one said they use a LOC(SBLOC/Portfolio LOC or unsecured LOC) as emergency fund. I choose to invest everything that I can into equities and use LOC for sudden expenses and has been going great. If you really want to "set aside an amount" then I would just invest that speicific amount in low volatility etfs/defensive etfs or even a 60/40 stock/bonds split etf but still use LOC before even touching that. The people in this video are looks like in their mid 20s so theyre going to be fine. Im 30 and my risk appetite is very unconventional

My emergency fund would include the absolute bare minimum. Great full to live in a city with mass transportation because car gets immediately parked, eliminating car insurance.

I am out of all debt. I have 20k in emergency fund in a hysa. I also have sinking funds for my next car, and car maintenance and vacations. I want to get my emergency fund to one year of expenses which would be about 40k but that can grow slowly at this point

I know this is a little strange but I have what I call a long term emergency fund building towards at least 3 months emergency fund and a short term emergency fund for the miscelleanous stuff that catches me off guard.

Our emergency fund is $20k. We are a dual income household of three + 3 cats, own a home, and my husband receives VA disability every month, so we are comfortable keeping ours low as it is unlikely we would both lose our jobs at the same time. Our monthly expenses generally sit around $3500-4000, we save/invest the rest (50-60% savings rate depending on the month). We have sinking funds for everything that we contribute to every month so it is rare for us to pull from it unless it is a true emergency: house repairs/renovations currently at $30k; car replacement fund $15k, medical $3k. We also have brokerage account, Roth IRAs, and workplace retirement accounts totalling around $150k. We have no debt outside of our mortgage which sits at $140k remaining. Me and my husband are 33 and 38. We've been through hard times and multiple job losses, but with smart budgeting moves, we have still achieved things I never thought we were capable of. Aiming to pay off our house in the next 7 years. We are happy and blessed and feel secure even if a job loss happens again.

June 2026 completed my 1yr goal of saving $21,000 in my emergency fund. But as luck would have it, I woke up to no water pressure in my house. BURST underground PIPE, front yard overflowing, water running down the driveway. Yup, $1,800 gone just like that (i.e., excavating the ground to find faulty pipe, repair of said pipe, correcting a pressure reducing valve placement, industrial dehumidifier & fans to dry the water in the basement). -This was the calmest I've ever been during a true home emergency, simple because I knew the money, regardless of cost, was already in place to cover it.

I use the savings account tied to my checking as protection from me, or a fraudulent transaction hitting my spending account. I hard cap that at one month's spending. I have a separate high yield savings account for emergencies. I top that off at the largest emergency that could happen to me. The roof and A/C in my house are new, and my car is only 4 years old, so I keep about $10,000 in there home repairs, but I never shut off my automatic contributions to this account as emergencies happen about every 12 to 18 months. I just don't put overages in there. After that I put quite a bit into a taxable brokerage account which I plan to only tap into for job loss.

I will just get a new credit card every year. They come with 0% APR for a year, so you can leave a balance for a little while without having to worry about interest accumulating. And then I will slowly pay it down after a large expense from my regular income, allowing me to keep investing at consistent intervals. When I get ahold of extra cash it goes right into the investment account.

Ladies, PLEASE stop the “up speak”, it completely diminishes your message. Once you’ve overcome up speak please, please, please drop the vocal fry.

🚨Emergency fund should be 6 months of your take home pay check, so if your take home month is $2k / per month , you should save ($12k).