Pillar 01 · Money
Emergency Fund
Calculator
How much emergency fund do you actually need? “Three to six months of expenses” is useless as a starting point, because “expenses” is doing a lot of vague work in that sentence. This starts somewhere honest instead: what one month of bare survival actually costs you — and then gives you a date.
Your Bare Minimum Number
Survival costs only. Rent, council tax, utilities, groceries at their leanest, minimum debt payments, getting to work. Leave out anything you could cut in an emergency and would — the subscriptions, the takeaways, the gym. This is not the life you want to live, it is the floor you would not fall through.
Optional. Everything you actually spend, lifestyle included — just to see the gap.
Whatever is in the emergency account today.
A standing order on payday beats willpower. Work it out as a percentage
As of August 2026 the market average sits around 2.5%, and the best easy-access rates are near 5% — though the very top ones usually include an introductory bonus that drops away after twelve months. Worth checking what yours pays now rather than what it paid when you opened it.
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The number that matters
Three months of bare survival
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The order, and the dates
| Stage | Target | Reached | From today |
|---|
This assumes you keep saving straight through. If you follow the order properly — starter fund first, then throw everything at the expensive debt, then come back — the three-month date moves back by however long the debt takes. The Debt Calculator will tell you how long that is.
Month by month
| Month | Paid in | Interest | Balance | Of target |
|---|
The gap between your Bare Minimum Number and what you'd normally call your expenses is the whole reason most emergency funds never get finished. The target was set with the wrong number.
You are not lowering your ambition by starting here. You are correcting a figure that was wrong to begin with, and picking one you can actually picture reaching.
How this is worked out
- Your Bare Minimum Number is the total of the survival lines above. The three-month target is simply that figure multiplied by three.
- The £1,000 starter fund comes first, before throwing everything at debt. It is what stops a burst boiler becoming a new card balance — which is how a great deal of debt actually gets created.
- Interest is added monthly from the AER you enter, with your payment landing at the start of each month. Easy-access rates are variable and can be cut at any time.
- The average and top-rate figures quoted above were correct in August 2026 and come from published UK rate tables. They move constantly, and the trend through 2026 has been downwards — check a current comparison rather than trusting a figure printed on a web page.
- An emergency fund belongs in a separate easy-access account, not the current account it would be absorbed into. The point is friction, not interest.
- Six months is shown as a later stage, not a first target. Reach three first.
- Nothing is stored, sent or saved. The numbers stay in your browser.
Before you act on this
This is general information, not financial advice. The Quiet Reset is written from personal experience rather than professional qualification, nothing here is a personal recommendation, and I don't know your circumstances. The figures are an illustration based on the numbers you enter, not a forecast. Savings rates and the tax treatment of interest change — check anything that matters against GOV.UK or the government-backed MoneyHelper service. If saving anything at all feels impossible right now, Citizens Advice, National Debtline and StepChange are free and will not judge you for asking.
This is Pillar 01: Money