Echo

In 2014, I was working in the pharmaceutical and biotech space.

And I essentially walked into work, had a meeting on my calendar, very suspicious, first thing in the morning with HR and my boss.

And lo and behold, I walk into the office and I am sat down in a boardroom and I'm told my position was eliminated and I have 30 minutes to pack my things in a cardboard box.

And then I proceeded to drive home in a blizzard.

Needless to say, it was a

several layers of trauma, but I quickly realized just how, you know, fast your life can change when these things happen.

definitely you need a bird's eye view of your budget, understand what is going on there, what are those essential expenses and make sure that you prioritize those.

So your housing, your medical expenses, your food, it could potentially be transportation if that's a really important aspect to your life.

And you wanna understand what are those essential costs and basically create a budget around that.

And what that's gonna do is it's gonna allow you to then figure out what your emergency fund should be.

That gets us to point number two, emergency savings.

Your emergency fund should be able to cover your bare bones expenses for three to six months.

Now, that number is very nebulous based on a number of different factors, including the

The value of your skill set, how quickly it'll be before you think you can get another job, right?

Like how in demand is your industry?

Are you like a single income household?

Do you have dual income?

Right.

But I think the baseline for most people is around three to six months.

For me, as someone who is now self-employed, I like nine to 12 months.