Tool · Money
Type in what you'd still have to pay each month if your paycheck stopped, what you have in cash, and what you add each month, and the calculator tells you how many months that cash covers — and how long it takes to reach the number of months you pick.
Where does each number come from?
- Monthly essentials
- What you’d still have to pay each month with no paycheck coming in: rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, insurance, getting to work or to interviews, and the minimum payment on every debt. The last two months of your bank and card statements hold every one of these, and the budget calculator sorts them into categories if you’d like to see them laid out. Take-home pay is the wrong number for this box, because it includes everything you’d stop spending on.
- Cash you could reach this week
- Today’s balances in checking, savings and money market accounts, from your bank’s app. A 401(k) or an IRA doesn’t go here, because taking money out early usually costs a penalty and tax. Neither do stocks or funds, because their price on the day you need them could be lower than today’s.
- What you add each month
- The standing transfer into savings, which your bank’s app shows under scheduled or recurring transfers. Zero is a fine entry, and the calculator will show that the balance stays where it is.
- Months to cover
- How long you want the cash to last. The box starts at six, the figure the FDIC’s consumer newsletter prints; the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s guide doesn’t give a number and says the amount depends on your situation. A job that takes a long time to replace, pay that swings from month to month, or a household running on one paycheck are the usual reasons people pick a bigger number, and the piece on how many months to save goes through each one.
- If your paycheck stops, spending
- This one sits under the button in the widget. It starts at “stays the same”. The other two choices, down about 10% or about 20%, are a guess about what you’d cut, and your statements show which bills that cut would come from.
- Savings rate
- Also under the button. It starts at zero. Your bank lists the rate on its website and on your statement as APY, short for annual percentage yield — what a year of interest adds to the balance, counting interest earned on earlier interest. Type the APY in and the calculator adds interest every month.
What moves the answer?
Let’s say your essentials come to $3,000 a month, you have $4,500 in savings, you add $400 a month, and you pick six months. Six months of essentials is $18,000. The $4,500 covers a month and a half today, which leaves $13,500 to go, and at $400 a month that takes 34 months — just under three years. You’d reach three months of cover, $9,000, in the twelfth month.
The monthly transfer moves the date the most. At $600 a month the same $13,500 takes 23 months instead of 34. A spending cut moves the answer from both ends at once: if your essentials would drop 10% to $2,700, the six-month number falls to $16,200 and the same $4,500 covers closer to a month and two-thirds. Interest barely moves it. At a 4% APY the 34 months become 31.
What does the calculator take as given?
- The six-month starting figure
- Comes from the FDIC’s consumer newsletter, “Saving for the Unexpected and Your Future”, January 2025: “Financial experts generally recommend that you have at least six months of living expenses in a federally insured product, such as a savings account or a certificate of deposit (CD).” The CFPB’s “An essential guide to building an emergency fund”, last updated 29 October 2025, sets no number: “The amount you need to have in an emergency savings fund depends on your situation.”
- The three-month line
- Comes from the Federal Reserve’s Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2025, published 13 May 2026. Three months is the measure its survey asks about: “55 percent of adults said they had set aside money for three months of expenses in an emergency savings or ‘rainy day’ fund — unchanged from 2024 but down from a high of 59 percent in 2021.” The calculator shows your own three-month figure beside that share.
- When deposits land
- At the end of each month, so the first one earns no interest in its own month.
- The target is in today's dollars
- Prices rise while you save, so a target that takes years to reach will be a little short when you get there. The calculator doesn’t adjust for that.
- What's left out
- Unemployment benefits, which your state’s unemployment office works out from your past pay and which would shrink what the cash has to cover. Severance, and a partner’s paycheck. Tax on the interest. A car repair or a medical bill that comes out of the same savings along the way.
The three-thousand-dollar month and the forty-five hundred in savings belong to a made-up household; your own essentials are sitting in the last two months of your statements, and the number of months is the one box on the page only you can fill in.
Sources
- Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2025, May 2026 (released 13 May 2026) — Savings and Investments: “55 percent of adults said they had set aside money for three months of expenses in an emergency savings or ‘rainy day’ fund—unchanged from 2024 but down from a high of 59 percent in 2021.”
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC Consumer News, “Saving for the Unexpected and Your Future”, January 2025 — “at least six months of living expenses in a federally insured product”.
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “An essential guide to building an emergency fund”, last modified 29 October 2025 — “The amount you need to have in an emergency savings fund depends on your situation.”