Whether you’re knee deep in debt, or you want to plan for your financial future, many experts are going to tell you that you absolutely need a six month emergency plan just in case everything fails, when it comes to making money for your family.

Creating a six month emergency plan isn’t that hard at all, and will only take you a few minutes to plan, and set up.  Getting the money on the other hand will take you a while if you have next to none today.

Know what your expenses are

The first thing that you want to do is write down every expense that you’re going to have to pay month after month.  These expenses are going to include the things that are absolutely necessary.  Things like your mortgage, rent, electric, etc.  Write these down on a piece of paper to know how much you’re going to spend.

How much money are you bringing in?

The next step that you want to take is by writing down how much money you’re bringing in each month.  If you’re bringing in random amounts of money since you’re in sales, I would recommend that you take the last 6 months, and average your take home pay.

Add it up

Now that you know how much money you’re bringing in, you want to then subtract your take home pay by your expenses.  This of course, will show you how much you’re going to need to save up month, after month.  Take that monthly number, and multiply it by six.  This is now the number that you should have in your savings.

If you have this number already in your savings, that’s great!  You’re going to have more than enough to survive for six months.  In that six months, you’ll have time to find a new job, and pay bills, while not going into debt.

If you don’t have that amount of money in a savings account, I would highly recommend that you find ways to save a little bit each month, until that savings is built back up.