I reached 6 months (net pay) recently. It took a long time and aggressive savings. Ideally it would last more than 6 months since it’s likely if we lose our jobs it’s part of some larger economic collapse that may take years to correct.

Damn now that I think about it, maybe I should put it all in gold.

This has been my stance for a long time as well. People are way too dogmatic with the emergency fund, to the point where it’s approaching cargo cult-levels - people don’t actually understand how to reason about it, just copy some advice some person said once upon a time.

An emergency fund should be able to cover immediate expenses in the case of an emergency. That’s literally it. As long as you can cough up some cash in a pinch, you’re more than fine.

It does not have to be in the form of cash you keep in an easy-to-withdraw account. I personally have less than a months salary at any given time in my bank account, and I’m planning to rely on the extensive credit I have in case it’s needed. I can produce quite significant amounts of cash interest-free for 60 days, should the need arise, and it’s extremely unlikely that I won’t be able to liquidate some of the investments (that I’ve accumulated partly by not stashing 6 months worth of salaries in cash in a dumb pile) in time to not even have to pay any interest at all.

I even asked this question once, and the best answer I heard was that in an emergency, my investments might lose money and become uncomfortable to liquidate. Sure, that might be the case, but I’m not at all convinced that the risk outweighs the yield of having more money invested. Plus, any emergency severe enough to severely reduce the value of my investments is already at the level of some form of societal collapse, and I’m not really convinced having a pile of cash in the bank will be particularly useful in that type of scenario.