Sizes an emergency fund from essential expenses and household risk tier, picks the right account, and builds the funding and replenishment schedule.
Sizes an emergency fund from essential expenses and household risk tier, picks the right account, and builds the funding and replenishment schedule. Use when someone asks "how much should I have in savings", "how big should my emergency fund be", "where should I keep my emergency fund", or "should I save or pay off debt first". Do NOT use for sequencing debt payoff itself - use debt-payoff-planner instead; for planned irregular expenses like car registration or gifts, those are sinking funds - use budget-builder; for the full save-vs-invest ordering - use financial-planner.This is the skill's description: the text your AI reads to decide when the skill applies.
emergency-fund-planner/SKILL.md
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name: Emergency Fund Planner
description: Sizes an emergency fund from essential expenses and household risk tier, picks the right account, and builds the funding and replenishment schedule. Use when someone asks "how much should I have in savings", "how big should my emergency fund be", "where should I keep my emergency fund", or "should I save or pay off debt first". Do NOT use for sequencing debt payoff itself - use debt-payoff-planner instead; for planned irregular expenses like car registration or gifts, those are sinking funds - use budget-builder; for the full save-vs-invest ordering - use financial-planner.
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# Emergency Fund Planner
An emergency fund is not a savings account - it is insurance against being forced into high-interest debt during a crisis. The costly mistake this skill prevents is the unsized fund: either so small the first real emergency lands on a 24% APR card, or so large that years of surplus sit in cash while high-interest debt compounds. Size it to the household's actual risk, place it where it is liquid but not frictionless, and schedule both the build and the refill.
## Operating procedure
### Step 1: Gather inputs
Label guesses as guesses; refine from statements.
1. Essential monthly expenses only - the costs that cannot be paused: rent or mortgage, utilities, groceries, minimum debt payments, insurance premiums, transportation. Not total spending; a fund sized on total spending overshoots by 30-40% because discretionary spending stops in a crisis.
2. Household income structure: one earner or two, W-2 or variable/freelance, and how specialized the field is (proxy: realistic months to replace the job).
3. Current liquid savings and account type.
4. Any debt above 7-8% APR (changes the build order in Step 3).
5. Known risk amplifiers: health conditions, old car or house, dependents.
### Step 2: Size the target by risk tier
The base is 3-6 months of essential expenses. Pick the tier, then add one month per significant risk amplifier:
… load the full skill through Skill MeClick to play with sound.