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Family & Life Planning

Emergency Fund Calculator

Build an emergency-fund target from entered essential monthly expenses and the number of months of coverage you choose.

Quick mode

Start with the few inputs that usually move the answer most. MFA keeps transparent defaults for the rest until you open them.

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Quick-mode assumptions: $1,400/month of other essentials remains in the target ($500 transport + $200 utilities + $300 insurance + $400 other). Open Full to edit the breakdown.

Monthly Essentials

$4,000

Target Fund

$24,000

Still Needed

$19,000

Progress21%
A common planning range is 3–6 months of essential expenses, with a larger cushion sometimes used for variable income, fewer income sources, or higher job/income uncertainty. Choose the target that fits your household rather than treating one number as universal.

What this means for you

You're 21% of the way to the target you selected. You still need $19,000 to reach 6 months of entered essentials.

  • Your entered essential expenses are $4,000/month, so 6 months equals $24,000.
  • If you wanted to close the current gap evenly over 12 months, that would be about $1,583/month.
  • The appropriate cushion varies with income stability, number of earners, insurance deductibles, dependents, access to credit and other backup resources.
Now that your safety net is sorted, start building wealth with compound growth

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Go deeper in Excel

Net Worth Dashboard

Track assets, debts, monthly changes and your net-worth trend in one clean workbook. The workbook is being built as a reusable companion to MFA's free web tools.

Planned workbook: Dashboard · asset/debt tracker · monthly history.

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Educational estimates only. Not financial, tax, investment, legal, payroll, mortgage, or insurance advice. Results may vary based on rates, tax rules, lender terms, state laws, and personal circumstances. Financial values entered into supported calculators may be stored privately with technical data such as IP address for MFA analytics, security, debugging and product improvement. Do not enter account numbers, passwords, Social Security numbers or login credentials. Privacy details.