Ndubuisi 'Andy' EgwimMoney Coach for Medics|Ex-NHS GP|21+ Yrs Investor| Founder, MoneyWiseDoctor.com|Helping Medics Avoid Big Money Mistakes

How much should your emergency fund be

2 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Dr. Ndubuisi “Andy” Egwim explains a practical approach to determining the size of an emergency fund. He advises viewers to first identify their essential monthly household expenses—such as mortgage or rent, utilities, food, essential transport, childcare, compulsory bills, and any required family support—excluding discretionary spending. He recommends calculating an average of these essential costs over the past three to twelve months to obtain a reliable monthly baseline. Once the baseline is known, individuals can decide how many months’ worth of expenses they wish to set aside, thereby establishing a personalized emergency fund amount. The guidance emphasizes not skipping the averaging step and references his book’s Chapter 2 for further detail.

Chapters

Before investing, think about keeping aside money for emergencies. And the next question I often get is, okay, Dr. Andy, how much is the emergency fund? How much should I keep aside? Like, there's no magical number, but here's a simple way to think about it. In my book, I described the number. I said, work out your essential monthly expenses, not everything you spend money on. That's in chapter 2. The things you genuinely need to keep your household functioning, compulsory bills, Mortgage or your rent, electricity, water bills, food, because you've got to eat, right? Essential transport, childcare, necessary family support to support your family, and so on. So people often tell me, my expenses change every month. Of course they do. So look backwards, take the last 3 months and calculate an average. Okay. Include, including the family support you have to send. Okay. Or even better, take the last 12 months, add up all the essentials, divide it by 12. Don't skip this bit. Don't skip it. In fact, once you know the monthly figure, you can start deciding how many months of expenses you want to save to have available.