Next: Money foundations
Inflation, and why ₹100 shrinks
Prices rise, so the same money buys less every year — and why a deposit paying 6% against 6% inflation leaves you no better off than when you started.
13 min
beginner
Emergency funds
The buffer that stops one bad month becoming one bad year: how much you need, where to park it so it is there on the day, and why it comes first.
3 lessons · about 18 minutes · written for reading age 13 · last checked 2026-07-01
What an emergency fund actually is
Money set aside for the month that goes wrong, parked somewhere you can reach in a day without losing any of it. The test is not how much it costs.
6 min
How much you actually need
Three to six months of essential expenses is the rule of thumb. What moves that number up, what moves it down, and why EMIs belong inside the figure.
6 min
Where to keep it
Reachable in a day with nothing lost on the way. That rules out more places than people expect, equity most of all, and deposit insurance caps the rest.
6 min
Check yourself
4 questions at the end. Every wrong answer explains itself.
Tools for this
What changed recently
Dated commentary on this topic — a Budget change, a new rule, a scam pattern.
2026-08-10 · 7 min read
Recessions are not an emergency
Economies have expanded and slowed in cycles for as long as anyone has measured them. That makes a downturn a weather pattern to be ready for, not a rupture.
2026-08-04 · 7 min read
The buffer that buys you a choice
An emergency fund absorbs something that happened to you. A larger buffer does a different job: it lets you leave a bad job or a bad flat on your own terms.
Sources
- A Guide to Deposit Insurance — Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation · checked 2026-07-01
- RBI financial education material — Reserve Bank of India · checked 2026-07-01