Emergency Fund Calculator

Start with the monthly expenses you want this reserve to cover. Full expenses describe the total you enter, while essential expenses describe your chosen subset. You can enter those totals directly or list five expense categories and mark which belong in the essential subset. Switching entry methods preserves the other inputs, so you can review the assumptions without rebuilding the plan. A target of three, six or twelve months is only a shortcut; you can enter another nonnegative target.

Available cash is separate from restricted and invested balances. The latter are recorded for context and do not increase the displayed coverage or reduce the cash gap. Coverage divides available cash by the selected monthly expense amount. It is a starting ratio rather than a prediction that every household expense will remain constant. Zero selected expenses produces a zero monetary target but no meaningful coverage ratio. Neither the ratio nor a completed target is presented as a safety guarantee.

The accumulation model converts annual effective APY into an equivalent monthly rate, then adds interest before the deposit at each month-end. It does not divide APY by twelve. With a chosen saving amount, the result identifies the first whole-month checkpoint that meets the target. A positive starting reserve can reach a higher target through interest alone. Without interest or deposits, a shortfall stays unreachable; a long reachable result is not replaced by a chart limit.

You can instead enter a deadline and solve the minimum constant monthly deposit, including growth on starting cash. The displayed transfer rounds upward to cents, while exports retain the unrounded minimum. A deadline of zero months cannot close an existing gap. Income remaining after expenses and saving is a separate budget check, not proof that a mathematical solution is affordable. Inspect a schedule month or preview another saving amount; all current results and exports use the same active assumptions until you apply or cancel that preview.

The interruption model starts from current available cash or the accumulation balance at the month you inspect. An optional immediate expense is paid before interest at checkpoint zero. Later months add modeled interest and withdraw the difference between selected expenses and entered interruption income. The reserve never becomes negative: any unpaid amount appears separately as uncovered expense. Income above expenses does not create an automatic saving deposit, so this scenario does not silently reuse the accumulation contribution.

Three comparison plans share your selected expenses, starting cash and APY but retain independently chosen target months and saving amounts. Their results use the same timing as the main plan. Complete schedules, assumptions and limitations are available in Copy, CSV and Print. No bank connection is used. A fresh visit does not remember values unless you choose Remember, and Share begins with a plain link before you explicitly include amounts or names. Older numeric saved values are restored without rounding and their original stored bytes remain untouched until an explicit reset or removal.