How many months of expenses should be liquid

Three to six for a stable income, more for irregular work, and the number that matters is expenses rather than income. The common mistake is sizing it against salary, which inflates the target and delays the point where you stop worrying.

Audit by statement, not by memory: export a year of transactions, group by merchant, and sort by annual total. Monthly amounts hide the size; the yearly figure is the one that produces cancellations.

Compare against what the cash would otherwise earn, and read the fee schedule. Genuine zero percent with no fees is cheap money and worth taking; the version with an arrangement fee and a rate that jumps after a year is a loan wearing a costume.

It commits you to a format that is tedious to migrate away from later. The first weeks also look worse than doing nothing, which is when most people abandon it.