Work out how large your emergency fund should be, how many months of expenses you cover today, and either how long it takes to fully fund the gap or the monthly amount needed to hit a deadline.
Advanced: custom coverage and currency
The bar runs from an empty fund to your full target. The dark marker shows how many months of expenses your current savings already cover.
| Checkpoint | Fund balance | Months of expenses covered |
|---|
Each row is a milestone on the way to a full fund, with the running balance and how many months of expenses it would cover.
For beginners: how to read this result
To get a result, choose one of the preset situations or enter your own figures: your essential monthly expenses and the cash you already hold for emergencies. Pick how many months of expenses you want the fund to cover with the 3, 6, 9 or 12-month buttons, then choose a planning mode.
The two planning modes
The planning toggle changes which extra field appears and what the headline answers.
- Plan by monthly contribution — you enter the amount you plan to add each month, and the calculator returns the number of months until the fund reaches its target.
- Plan by target date — you enter a deadline in months, and the calculator returns the monthly contribution needed to fill the gap by that date.
Switching mode hides the field belonging to the other mode, so only the input you need is on screen.
How the math works
The target fund size is your essential monthly expenses multiplied by the chosen number of months of coverage. The months of expenses you cover today is your current savings divided by your essential monthly expenses. The remaining gap is the target minus your current savings, never less than zero. In contribution mode the months to fully fund equals the gap divided by the monthly contribution, rounded up to a whole month. In target-date mode the required monthly contribution equals the gap divided by the number of months in your deadline.
The coverage gauge and fill timeline
The coverage gauge is a progress bar running from an empty fund to your full target, with a marker showing how many months of expenses your current savings already cover. The fill-timeline table lists milestones from today to the fully-funded month, with the running balance and the months of coverage at each step, so the plan becomes a concrete schedule rather than a single number.
What is not included
This is a planning estimate. An emergency fund is meant to be held as accessible cash, so the build-up is treated as a plain sum of contributions with no investment growth or interest. It does not adjust future expenses for inflation and does not account for changes in income, irregular costs or one-off windfalls. It is general information, not financial advice — review your own budget before setting a savings target.