Emergency Fund Milestones

If an emergency fund should cover 3-9 months of expenses, and you're a cautious sort, have children and aim for the higher amount, your emergency fund could be in the tens of thousands.

I actually worked out £7582.68 for the 'average' person in the UK (see my workings below).*

If you're starting from scratch that is wild! Enough to put you off?

But Imagine If You’d Saved:

• £30

  • You have enough to cover emergency dentist treatment.

• £250

  • You have a choice of a few washing machines at Currys.

• £536

  • Replaces all four tyres on a Ford Focus at Kwik Fit.

• £1000

  • A family member needs your support at short notice, £1000 covers train tickets from Nottingham to London, a couplf of days in a hotel and some to spare for food and travel.

• £2527.56

  • Covers twelve weeks of expenses if you lose your income.

• £4,000

  • Covers a new combi-boiler installation according to Check a Trade.

These Amounts Are Not Insignificant

These are genuine issues which come up in every day life and they're what emergency funds are for.

If you don't have an emergency fund, you're looking at borrowing the money (from a human or a credit card), taking money from elsewhere or simply suffering.

Reaching £7582.68 or whatever your goal is amazing, but reaching any one of these milestones will be a weight off your mind and is an accomplishment worth reaching for your financial stability.

One in five people in the UK have less than £1,000 in savings, don’t let it be you!

Love Eleanor. xxx

*The Office for National Statistics suggests an average weekly family expenditure in 2024 was £623.30 per week. I took off the £72.80 they included for recreation, £44.40 they included for hotels and restaurants, £8.50 for alcohol and £2.60 for tobacco to reach £495 to get closer to what's absolutely necessary (though as I say in the footnote, this is subjective, when I was a smoker that tobacco would have been absolutely necessary).

Then I divided that by 2.35 which is the average amount of people in each household according to the last census, to reach £210.63.

Multiply that by four for the month and times that by 9 for the higher end of the emergency fund suggestion and I get £7582.68 per person.