Workbook — Foundations · Created October 5, 2026 · 1 min read
Emergency Fund Calculator
Sized on what survival costs, not on what your lifestyle costs.
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Most emergency-fund advice starts from income, which is the wrong end. What matters is the number you would actually have to cover if the income stopped. This sizes the fund from essential costs alone.
Download: EmergencyFundCalculator.xlsx — free, no email required, and it opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.
What This Workbook Does
- A line for each essential cost — housing, utilities, food, insurance, minimum debt payments, transport.
- A month multiplier, so you can see three months against six against twelve.
- A build schedule showing how long the target takes at your current monthly saving.
How to Use It
- Fill in the essentials only. Not restaurants, not subscriptions, not travel — this is the survival number.
- Include minimum debt payments. They do not pause because your income did.
- Choose a month target. Three months is a floor for a two-income household with stable work; six or more if income is variable or a single earner carries the household.
- Enter what you can save each month and read the build date.
What It Will Not Do
The target is only as honest as the essential-cost list. Leaving out an annual insurance premium or a quarterly bill is the usual way this number comes out too low.
Every workbook on this site is free. The full set — budgeting, debt, career, real estate and the kids’ sheets — is on the Worksheets & Planners page.
Where to go next: Emergency Funds — why the fund is sized this way and where it should sit; How to Budget — finding the monthly number that fills it; The Financial Order of Operations — where the fund ranks against everything else.