Not X times, but X% of. For us, that was 90-100% of annual expenses. We wanted a one year cushion in case something went wrong. And to be clear - that's cash m

Not X times, but X% of. For us, that was 90-100% of annual expenses. We wanted a one year cushion in case something went wrong. And to be clear - that's cash money, not investments. That is simply a crash easy to access liquid asset in case of emergency. If we couldn't say, this cash is exclusively for this goal, we didn't count it. It took 6 years to put together, with both of us working in education.