Your emergency fund

Your emergency fund is your safety buffer — how long you could keep going if your income suddenly stopped. keel shows it as a band (like "2 to 3 months") rather than a falsely precise decimal, and checks in when your spending changes enough that the picture might have shifted.

It lives on the Savings screen, with a preview card on your dashboard.

How it works

Tell keel which accounts hold your buffer

The main way to set up your emergency fund is to tell keel which accounts hold it. On the Savings screen, tap "Choose your emergency fund accounts" and tick the ones that make up your safety net — you can pick more than one, across current, joint, savings and ISA accounts. Savings and ISA accounts come pre-ticked as a sensible starting guess; adjust to match reality.

keel then reads the real balances from those accounts to work out your months of cover, and tracks whether you keep the buffer protected each month. Credit cards, loans, mortgages and business accounts aren't offered — you can't hold an emergency fund in those. You can edit your choice any time from the Savings screen or from Settings → Household. If keel can't read an account's balance yet, it shows "—" rather than a misleading £0, and you can import a statement to value it.

The survival question

If you have nothing to import, keel falls back to asking one question: "How long could you keep going if income stopped?"

You pick from five bands, or "Not sure":

• Less than 1 month
• 1 to 2 months
• 2 to 3 months
• 3 to 6 months
• 6+ months
• Not sure (treated as a rough estimate)

That's it. You don't need to know your exact savings balance or monthly outgoings — the question itself is the point.

When keel derives vs asks

The Savings screen works in two modes, depending on how much complete data keel has.

Derived mode. Once you have at least 3 months of complete spending data and a connected savings account, keel shows the real maths:

You've got £8,400 in savings — covers about 1.4 months at your current spending. Based on £6,100/mo across your last 3 complete months of data.

The £ figure is your real balance. The months figure is that balance divided by your average monthly spend over recent complete months. Partial months — where an account hasn't fully synced — are excluded, because including them would make your cover look better than it actually is.

When keel's derived figure differs from what's on file (you've never declared, or your old estimate has drifted), the screen asks "Does this sound right?" with two actions:

• Yes, looks right — accepts keel's figure in one tap. This is what unlocks (or updates) your emergency-fund score.
• Override — opens the band picker so you can choose differently. Your answer always wins.

Once the figure on file agrees with keel's derived read, the prompt collapses to a quiet "Not right? Update it" link. keel stops asking, and the number is never changed without your tap.

Declared mode. When there isn't enough complete data yet, keel falls back to your survival-question answer with explicit attribution: the £ savings figure stays factual, the band is clearly marked as your estimate, and the copy explains that once your accounts are fully up to date, keel will switch to a precise figure. The primary action is to import recent statements — fixing the data gap, not endlessly adjusting the estimate.

The confidence cue

In declared mode, the buffer band comes with a cue telling you how trustworthy it is:

Situation	Cue
Less than 3 months of spending data	"We'll estimate your buffer in months once we've seen ~3 months of spending"
Only your declaration, no spend context yet	"Based on what you told us"
Some data, incomplete account coverage	"Based on partial data — connect more accounts for a sharper number"
3+ months of data, healthy coverage	"Based on your last 3 months"
You tapped "Not sure"	"Rough estimate"

Where you see it

• Dashboard card ("Safety buffer") — band, confidence cue and trajectory; taps through to the Savings screen.
• Savings screen — the full picture: band, confidence, trajectory, re-declare link, goal CTA, your savings accounts and a coaching explainer.
• Score screen — the emergency fund score component shows the band.
• A goal's detail page — if you have an emergency-fund goal, it tracks progress there.

Trajectory

With at least two months of data, the buffer shows a trajectory line — something like "+0.2 mo this month". Brand-new households with one month of data don't see it: a single data point isn't a direction.

Re-checking your position

keel checks in when your declaration is more than 6 months old, or when your total monthly spending has shifted by 20% or more compared with before you declared. A gentle re-prompt appears; tapping it opens the declaration again. Dismissing resets the baseline, and keel won't nag about the same shift twice. Households with under 6 months of spending data don't get the spending-shift prompt — there's no stable baseline to compare against.

Building toward a buffer

If your buffer is under 2 months, keel offers to turn it into a goal. Tapping "Set a goal to get to 3 months" opens the goal wizard pre-filled with Emergency fund as the type. You pick how many months of spending to cover, keel does the £ maths from your average spend, and offsets any savings it can already see — so the goal tracks only the gap you need to add. See financial goals for the full mechanics.

How it affects your score

The emergency fund component is worth up to 100 points of your health score:

Band	Points
3+ months	100
2 to 3 months	70
1 to 2 months	40
Less than 1 month (with some buffer)	10
Not sure	partial credit — about 0.6× the "1 to 2 months" points
Nothing declared	0

A confirmed derived band and a manually declared band score exactly the same — only how the band gets set differs.

Keeping your buffer protected

On top of how much cover you have, keel tracks whether you keep your emergency fund protected each month — a small scored ring worth up to 20 points. It only ever rewards you:

• You held or grew it — you earn the ring.
• You drew it down — the ring simply sits the month out. Your score is unaffected. Using your emergency fund in a real emergency is exactly what it's for, and keel won't dock you for it.
• You haven't declared your accounts yet — the ring shows "declare to unlock".

Moving money between two of your own emergency-fund accounts doesn't count as drawing it down.

How it affects coaching

Your coaching voice (supportive, analytical or direct) is set by you and stays stable. What changes with your buffer is how assertive the coaching gets about trade-offs:

• Under 2 months — keel acknowledges the trade-off when you're saving toward stretch goals: "You're saving well toward your holiday — worth deciding which matters more, given your buffer is under 1 month."
• 2 to 3 months — default tone, no adjustment.
• 3+ months — more permissive; stretch-goal framing gets room to breathe.

keel never blocks goals, hides insights or overrides your decisions because your buffer is low. It contextualises.

If you tag a day-to-day spending account as your emergency fund and keel sees you're actively spending from it, it'll gently suggest moving the buffer to a separate account where it's easier to leave untouched. That's a coaching nudge, never a penalty — your choice of account doesn't change your score.

Why it works this way

• A band, not a decimal. Decimal months imply a precision keel often doesn't have. A band plus a reliability cue is more honest than a number that shifts with every import.
• Derive when keel can, ask when it can't. Once keel has 3 complete months and good coverage, asking you to estimate something it can compute is friction without benefit. With thin data, the survival question is genuinely the better answer.
• Confirm, never auto-apply. Even when keel derives your band, it never silently changes your score off it — you tap "Yes, looks right" first.
• The survival question over a £ range. What you actually want to know is "how long can I keep going?", not "how much have I saved?" — so keel asks that directly.

Good to know

• You declared in £ a while ago? keel maps an older £ declaration to a band automatically using your recent spending. You can re-declare via the survival question any time.
• "Not sure" still earns points. Declaring something rough is better than declaring nothing — it unlocks the score component at reduced credit.
• Full data but never confirmed. In derived mode, your real cover is shown — but your emergency-fund score stays at 0 until you tap "Yes, looks right". One tap fixes it.
• Stale estimate vs real data. If you declared "1 to 2 months" long ago but your savings and spending now imply "3 to 6", keel surfaces the confirm prompt to reconcile. Confirming replaces the stale band with the data-backed one.

FAQ

Why is it a band and not a specific number?

Because the exact number is rarely the useful one, and when keel doesn't have much data it isn't even accurate. A band gives you the right mental picture.

Why didn't keel ask me this at signup?

Onboarding is deliberately short. The buffer declaration only means something once keel knows roughly what you spend — you'll see the card on your dashboard after your first import.

What counts as "income stopped"?

Whatever it would mean for you. The point of the question is that you answer it — keel doesn't audit whether you're right.

Will keel keep nagging about an old declaration?

Roughly once every six months keel might ask you to re-check. If you dismiss, it waits at least 60 days and only re-fires if your spending has shifted 20% or more. If nothing has changed, keel says nothing.

What's the difference between "emergency fund" and "savings"?

In keel's language, the emergency fund is the intent — the portion of your money mentally reserved for "if income stops". Savings is everything across your savings-type accounts.

Can I tell keel which accounts are "the buffer"?

Yes. On the Savings screen, tap "Choose your emergency fund accounts" and tick the ones that hold your safety net — you can pick several, across current, joint, savings and ISA accounts. keel sums their balances for your months of cover. Prefer to just give a rough estimate? The survival question is still there as a fallback.

Will tagging a current account as my emergency fund hurt my score?

No. Your choice of account never affects your score. If keel notices you're actively spending from an account you've marked as your emergency fund, it'll suggest moving the buffer somewhere separate — but that's a gentle nudge, not a deduction.