Split your income for two years while life goes wrong on its own schedule — and find out what a cash buffer is actually worth.
Feel why keeping some savings liquid is insurance that stops a small shock becoming a debt spiral — and that the right buffer is a genuine tradeoff, not 'save everything'.
You earn $2,000 this month. Essentials take $1,200, leaving $800 to split.
This month: $400 lifestyle · $240 to the fund · $160 invested.
Rule of thumb: keep 3–6 months of expenses liquid — that is $3,600 at your essentials.
In this simulation, selling investments in a hurry costs 35% of what you sell, and emergency credit runs at 36% APR — charged monthly on the running balance, as this simulation does, that works out to about 42.6% over a year. That 35% is an illustrative penalty, not a typical real-world cost — a real forced sale costs something, rarely this much. It is set deliberately steep to make the point visible: money locked away is at its most expensive exactly when you need it.
Investments here grow at a fixed 0.6% a month (about 7.4% a year), with no ups and downs at all. That is on purpose — the only risk in this simulation is liquidity, not being able to reach your money when a bill lands. For what investment risk itself looks like, run Eggs in One Basket.