🛡️ Protect · Build · Sleep BetterEmergency Fund.
Emergency Fund.
Your financial shock absorber.
Calculate exactly how large your emergency fund needs to be. Set your essential monthly expenses, choose your months of cover, and see your target corpus, projected buffer, and the monthly saving required to close the gap — modelled on October 2026 rates.
✔ 100% Free
✔ No Data Stored
✔ India-First
⚡ Takes under 30 seconds
🔒 Data stays in your browser
₹3.6L
🎯 Target Buffer
₹2.8L
📊 Projected in 18 mo
₹10,270/mo
💰 Required Saving
-₹81K
📉 Shortfall
Visualise
Your Safety Net
An emergency fund is sized on essentials, not lifestyle — rent, EMIs, school fees, utilities, insurance premiums, groceries and medicines. This plan multiplies that monthly number by your months of cover, then projects what your current savings plus monthly contributions will actually reach at your parking rate. Adjust the sliders to see how much is missing and what monthly saving closes it.
See whether your buffer will be ready before you need it.
Target vs Projected Buffer
Your Saving vs Required Saving
Analysis: Your target buffer is ₹3,60,000. Projected buffer in 18 months is ₹2,79,015. You need ₹10,273 per month to close the gap. Your current buffer covers 2.5 months of essentials — start today.
How the Emergency Fund Simulator WorksThree numbers, one decision
- Target buffer: Essential monthly expenses × months of cover. Use the 3-6-9-12 rule: 3 months if you are single with steady income, 6 if you have dependents and steady income, 9 if single with irregular income, 12 if dependents and irregular income.
- Projected buffer: Your current savings grown at your parking rate, plus monthly contributions. Liquid funds returned roughly 6.4–6.5% over the year to October 2026, while sweep-in FDs sit near 6%.
- Required monthly saving: The gap divided across your build horizon. This is your action number — automate it on salary day and the fund builds itself.
Your emergency fund storyBased on current inputs
- Target buffer: ₹3,60,000 (6 months × ₹60,000 essentials).
- Projected in 18 months: ₹2,79,015 (current savings + monthly contributions at 6.5%).
- Status: Shortfall of ₹80,985. Required saving: ₹10,273/mo against your current ₹6,000.
- Where to park: ₹1,20,000 (2 months) in a savings account or sweep-in FD, ₹2,40,000 in a liquid fund.
Emergency fund best practices for India, October 2026
- ✓Size it on essentials, not lifestyle: rent, EMIs, utilities, insurance premiums, school fees, groceries and medicines. Discretionary spending can pause in a crisis; these cannot.
- ✓Apply the 3-6-9-12 rule: 3 months for single + steady income, 6 for dependents + steady income, 9 for single + irregular income, 12 for dependents + irregular income. Dual-income households with a home loan typically sit at 6–9 months.
- ✓Don’t leave it all in savings: the RBI savings deposit benchmark is 2.50% while CPI inflation was 5.54% in September 2026. Split 1–2 months into a savings account or sweep-in FD for instant access, and the rest into a liquid fund at ~6.5%.
- ✓Use sweep-in FDs for the middle layer: surplus above a threshold sweeps into a short deposit at roughly 6%, and withdrawals top up your account automatically.
- ✓Keep it separate from investments: this money is for liquidity and resilience, not returns. Never fund it by breaking an SIP, and never invest it in equity.
- ✓Insure before you self-insure: adequate health cover reduces the corpus you need. Without health insurance, add roughly ₹10–15 lakh to your target for medical contingencies.
- ✓Re-run it after every life event: a new loan, a child, a job change, a rent hike or a salary jump all move the essentials number. Review annually at minimum.
- ✓Track it in the Wealth Wallet: the Wealth Wallet holds your emergency fund, net worth and insurance in one place.
🧮 What’s next? Build the buffer, then build wealth
- ✦Size your health and term cover → use the Insurance Pro Simulator
- ✦Once funded, start investing → SIP vs Lumpsum Simulator
- ✦Park and track the corpus → open the Wealth Wallet
- ✦See how liquidity feeds your health score → check your Wallet Score
Explore More
Emergency Fund Deep Dive
How much to hold, where to park it, and how to build it without derailing your investments.
Emergency Fund India 2026: How Much Is Enough?
The 3-6-9-12 rule, applied to real household profiles.
Read →Where to Park Your Emergency Fund in India (October 2026)
Savings account vs sweep-in FD vs liquid fund — with current rates.
Read →Emergency Fund vs Savings Account: Why the Difference Matters
2.5% on idle cash against 5.54% inflation is a slow loss.
Read →Sweep-in FD vs Liquid Fund: Which Wins for Emergency Money?
Access speed, exit loads and post-tax returns compared.
Read →Emergency Fund for Freelancers and Business Owners
Why 12 months is the floor when income is irregular.
Read →Emergency Fund When You Have a Home Loan and Dependents
EMIs don’t pause. Here’s the cushion you actually need.
Read →Real-life example: Priya & ArjunBuilding a ₹4.8 lakh buffer in 14 months
- Priya & Arjun – dual-income couple in Bengaluru with a home loan and one child. Essential monthly expenses: ₹80,000.
- Target: 6 months of essentials = ₹4,80,000. They had ₹1,20,000 parked in a savings account earning 3%.
- Gap: ₹3,60,000. At ₹20,000/month it would take 18 months with no interest — longer than they were comfortable with.
- Using the simulator: a ₹25,000/month contribution at 6.5% closes the gap in about 14 months, with the existing ₹1,20,000 earning alongside.
- How they parked it: ₹1,60,000 (2 months) in a sweep-in FD for instant access, ₹3,20,000 in a liquid fund. Both auto-debit on salary day.
- Result: fully funded in 14 months, untouched since — and tracked in the Wealth Wallet.
Frequently asked questions
emergency fund months3-6-9-12 ruleliquid fund vs FD
sweep-in FDwhere to parkhow much is enough
🛡️ Sizing the Fund
Use the 3-6-9-12 rule: 3 months if you are single with steady income, 6 months if you have dependents and steady income, 9 months if you are single with irregular income, and 12 months if you have dependents and irregular income. Dual-income households with a home loan generally sit at 6–9 months. Freelancers and business owners should treat 12 months as the floor, not the ceiling.
Essentials only. Rent or home loan EMI, utilities, insurance premiums, school fees, groceries, medicines, transport to work and minimum debt repayments. Dining out, subscriptions and travel can be paused in a crisis, so including them inflates your target and slows you down. Maintain two numbers — essential and discretionary — and build the fund around the first.
It pushes you to the top of the range. If you are single and freelance, target 9 months; with dependents, 12 months or more. The reason is time-to-recovery, not spending: replacing an irregular income takes longer, and the fund has to cover that gap without forcing you to sell investments at a bad time.
Yes, meaningfully. Adequate health cover removes the largest single shock from your fund. But it does not eliminate medical outflows entirely — deductibles, co-payments and non-payable items are still cash. If you have no health insurance at all, add roughly ₹10–15 lakh to your target, because that is the realistic floor for a serious hospitalisation in India today.
🏦 Where to Park It
Split it by access speed, not equally. Keep 1–2 months of expenses in a savings account or sweep-in FD for instant access, and the remainder in a liquid mutual fund. As of October 2026, liquid funds are averaging roughly 6.4–6.5% over one year, sweep-in FDs are near 6%, and savings accounts pay about 2.5–4%. A common split for a ₹5 lakh fund is ₹1–1.5 lakh in savings, the rest in liquid funds.
Sweep-in FD for the layer you might need within a week: it gives FD-level interest with automatic top-up of your savings account. Liquid fund for money you are less likely to need overnight: better post-tax returns and T+1 settlement, but a graded exit load applies to redemptions within seven days. Many households use both, which is why the split matters more than the choice.
Liquid funds are not guaranteed, but they hold debt maturing within 91 days with at least 20% in cash and government paper, and they carry a Low-to-Moderate riskometer. The bigger real risk is inflation: a savings account at 2.5% against CPI at 5.54% loses purchasing power every year. For an emergency fund, that trade-off is worth taking on the portion you won’t need within 48 hours.
📘 General
Briefly, yes — if you have nothing at all. A fund of zero means the next shock goes on a credit card at 36–42% or forces an equity sale at the worst moment. Build one month of expenses first, then run the SIP and the fund in parallel. The simulator shows the monthly number; most people find it is smaller than they feared.
Once a year at minimum, and immediately after any life event that moves your essentials: a new loan, a rent revision, a child, a job change, or a salary jump. The simulator is free and instant, so there is no reason to run a stale target. Track the fund itself in the Wealth Wallet.
🧭 Explore the INDwallet Ecosystem
The simulator tells you the number. The wallets help you hit it.