The cushion that buys calm

An emergency fund earns no return, impresses no one in any conversation, and yet it holds up everything else: it's what keeps a 600 € breakdown or two months without work from turning into an expensive debt you drag along for years.

The usual guideline is to gather between three and six months of your basic expenses —not of your salary— and keep them in a separate, boring, available account. If your essential expenses are 900 €, we're talking about between 2,700 and 5,400 €. It isn't invested: its job isn't to grow, it's to be there.

What that money buys isn't things, it's position: saying no to a bad job, absorbing an unexpected cost without an expensive credit card, deciding without panic. Calm can be saved for too, and this is its account.