How much is in your emergency fund?

[Skelfy]

And in what circumstances do you dip into it?

We have £13k which is 5 months of absolutely bare bones essentials (high mortgage).

I'm in a secure-ish public sector job, part time, my salary could just about cover absolute essentials. DH higher earner but much more precarious job security though has in demand skills & experience.

Why are you over paying your mortgage if you are on a very low rate? Better off in a savings account where the interest rate will exceed your mortgage interest rate. Then if you want to pay off a lump sum when you remortgage you will have the cash put aside

If you can't eat or heat you can't save so this is more about how wealthy everyone is bare minimum to some is a meal a day.

Right now we have 26k we have saved up and borrowed against the mortgage for maternity leave.

I also have about 10k in personal savings to buy a horse in a few years time.

We have no other savings at all. Spent it all on maternity leaves etc over the last few years.

@Hitchens the logic is probably that they are paying more of the capital off right now as the interest is low. Whereas if you overpay on a high rate you're mainly just paying off interest (although of course a lower mortgage means lower interest in general)

£5.3K (and growing) in various easy access saving accounts, so seven months of essential living expenses if it came to it. I hope to never dip into it other than for a property deposit next year. It’s a nice feeling having this money as an emergency back up (single person here).

I have enough to cover bills for a few years, I would cancel non essentials like subscriptions and Sky TV though if I found myself unable to work. I am at a different stage of life to most of you as kids are away now and I was lucky to have a mortgage when the interest rates were low and was able to overpay the hell out of it and paid it off 10 years early.

Definitely different times now with COL, childcare costs, house prices and interest rates.

Dipped into mine a couple of years ago for an unexpected boiler replacement but now have enough again to live for 4 months comfortably or 6 months very frugally.

I am self employed so prefer to have 12 months if possible and am currently adding to mine each month to try to get back to that. Mortgage is paid off so just household bills/food/car expenses to cover as a minimum. This is just my 'emergency' fund though - I have other savings pots for holidays/car replacement/Christmas/home improvements etc... so those could be used in an emergency if necessary too.

Absolutely fuck all.

No savings whatsoever.

Our emergency fund is £30k - which would probably be well over a years expenses. But we keep it that high in case we need to replace something like our boiler or car repairs etc. We both grew up in financially unstable families and its made us quite cautious though I am significantly more risk adverse than my husband who would like to invest some of our savings.
We had to pay £1k to repair our car recently and we didn't dip into our emergency fund because we had 'spare' savings. So we keep additional savings which goes towards holidays, general home improvements. So more like 'known' costs that we're planning for.

1 years worth of expenses it does not get touched as i have sinking funds for house things, holidays, birthdays etc. The only time that money will be touched is if we had no other source of income and all other funds had been depleted! I'm hoping we can continue to add to it and have some extra money when we are older.

For 6 months all bills plus absolute essentials I need around 13K, I have this plus about another 40K. But I haven’t just moved house and have been saving for years, I want to try and pay off half of my mortgage at the end of the fixed rate in about 3 years. This will cost me around 50K.
I feel much better having money in the bank, I get very insecure when there isn’t a lot there. I had 12K around 3 years ago after house renovations and have saved every spare money to build it up. I’m single with one child. It’ll take time but you will be able to build it back up.

Thanks so much everyone for your various perspectives, hopefully this thread will be helpful for others as it's been really helpful for me.

For what it's worth I remember crying because I could only afford a pair of shoes for my toddler by putting it on credit. Not all of us are fortunate to ever get out of that stage I know.

I've set up a mortgage overpayment this afternoon of 3% of our net income, not much but it's a start. And the same into the emergency fund each month, plus being more realistic/mindful of sinking funds for house repairs etc. I'll need to re look at the budget first!

I am aiming for 10k not to be touched apart from job loss or other life changing circumstance.
Then 2k short term - large car repairs, unexpected bills etc

we have only 1k. for any ankle biter emergencies... nothing major. unfortunately

We did the comparison but it didn't work for us. The size of the mortgage loan versus the amount we could save each month didn't compare.

2.5k that has been scrimped and saved over 1.5 years. Literally every last penny that is left goes into it every month (including any birthday money received etc...)

You will get people that have £££££££££ and others who have nothing. There is not a right or wrong answer to this currently with the cost of living. In an ideal world we will all have 6+ months salary for emergencies, in the real world people are just trying to live one day to the next.

Don’t you just love it when original posters feel we’re all wealthy….or is it just to brag that they’re in a well paid secure job?

I need to have about £80k on hand for legal fees to deal with my insane ex.

I made the mistake of letting this get depleted temporarily (down to single digits) while waiting for my partner's house to sell. Big mistake, as I have about £15k in legal bills this month thanks to his harming my daughter.

Life is stressful.

I have over 2 years of living comfortably. But that is because I am in my 50s, working/earning more in the last few years, preparing for retirement, modest mortgage paid off, no huge expenses like childcare anymore. A few (painful) things helped financially along the way - redundancy package and 3 small inheritances (<£10k each) helped reduce mortgage term.

when I was in my 30s I had nothing and lived month to month with large credit debt.

If I had a choice I’d still go back to my 30s in a heartbeat!

We have a 6 figure pot earmarked for school fees and currently save about 5k per month as we’re older parents so we’ll be retiring well before school finishes so need plenty saved up before then.

We’ve paid our mortgage off though so monthly bills aren’t huge.

The rest we chuck into pensions as it’s extremely tax efficient being so close to retirement providing Labour don’t change the rules.

I have a 4K emergency fund that I try not to touch unless it’s a genuine emergency and around 2.5k as general/short term savings that gets dipped into first if needed. I built this up after being in a lot of credit card debt so albeit it isn’t a lot, but to me it’s an achievement

We don't have an emergency fund, instead we have general savings. This pot is quite high (for us) at the moment as we are saving hard to repay our mortgage in full 18yrs early when the fix ends in a few years time. It's a hugely ambitious goal.
We would dip into it if needed but it would be a last resort.

@Lolocopter
The presumption here that if you didn't have that money your ex would be riding rough shod over you both?

I used to get anxious spending my savings so I ve had to set up cascading pots

1. Someone is broken for house repairs or glasses / dentist £150 a month use this first unless empty-this is currently £400 as had to buy a new front door , 2nd half need to pay in a month £1440 then
2. Holiday fund £150 a month can use this for holidays unless there is a house repair etc the first fund can't cover some of this will probably need to cover the other half of the door £1800 in here , need to pay £900 in August for morroco plus who knows how much for NZ hotels over Christmas
3. Home office fund £400 a month . £8000 saved so far going to order at end of the year hopefully keep to £10000 budget as we will assemble
4. Stocks and shares ISA £6400 £70 a month into global equity . Hoping not to touch this and it will eventually bridge gap between state pension age and when I want to retire
5. Premium bonds £3650 £50 a month again this is a sort of last stop emergency fund and also I might win a million

This excludes mortgage overpayments (£240 a month ) and pension (£557)which comes out of salary .

If I have any spare at the end of the month it will go to the household / holiday fund which ever needs it the most . I also generally try to absorb minor emergencies in monthly budget eg new kettle / patio chairs last month .

Sorry that was long 😁

About £30k. Never dip into it ever.

We're not rich, we don't go on holidays abroad etc, don't spend a lot of money on cars but DH is self-employed in a manual job so if he was unable to work, this would keep us going (though I am the higher earner, and could cover the bills etc)