I feel most comfortable having 6 months' worth of normal spending saved up. I assume it could last 9 months or so if we were really living off of it with no other income, because we'd cut out extras like eating out and buying out-of-season fruit.
But I use the same account for emergency savings and for big irregular expenses, like annual insurance premiums and car repairs. So I'm adding to it all the time, and sometimes we're a bit under or over that 6-month mark.
Also, because we have multiple income streams, it's pretty unlikely that we'd be down to ZERO income. (knock wood) It's much more likely that we'd lose a major source of income, like 30-40 percent of our household gross, and then we'd cut back our spending, work on replacing it as soon as possible, and also draw a bit out of our savings to cover the shortfall until we got back on track.
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