Emergency Fund Calculator (UK)

Your target fund is your monthly essential expenses multiplied by the number of months you want to cover.

• Recommended for your situation is a range rather than a single number, because the right answer genuinely depends on how predictable your income is. The usual "three to six months" assumes a steady salary with sick pay behind it. If you are self-employed, the only earner in your household, or in the middle of a separation, the sensible figure is higher — there is no employer to fall back on and the costs arriving are less predictable.
• Cover you have now converts what you already have into months, which is a more useful measure than a pound figure. It answers the actual question: if the income stopped tomorrow, how long before this becomes a crisis?
• Progress is your current savings as a percentage of your target, capped at 100%.
• Still needed is the gap, and the timeline underneath it is that gap divided by what you said you could save each month, rounded up.

Essential expenses means what you could not avoid: housing, utilities, council tax, food, insurance, minimum debt payments, childcare you need in order to work. It does not mean your current total spending. Most people's essential figure is meaningfully lower than they expect, which makes the target less daunting than it first looks.

• The recommended ranges are widely used rules of thumb, not regulated guidance. Your own circumstances — a mortgage you could not cover, a health condition, dependants, an unstable employer — may justify more.
• The timeline assumes you save the same amount every month and do not draw on the fund while building it.
• Figures ignore interest earned while you build. At current rates on an easy-access account, that will shorten the timeline slightly rather than change the picture.
• An emergency fund should be somewhere you can reach within a day or two — an easy-access savings account, not a fixed-term bond, and not invested. Money you might need at short notice does not belong in the stock market.
• If you have expensive debt, particularly credit cards or an overdraft, it is usually worth building a smaller buffer first (£1,000 is a common starting point), clearing the debt, then returning to the full target.