StartupCostCheck Glossary
What is Emergency fund?
An emergency fund is personal money reserved for essential household shocks and kept outside the cash available for starting or running the business.
Why it matters
A broken boiler or urgent family expense does not wait for the business to make a sale. Treating emergency money as startup capital transfers business risk directly to the household. A clear separation makes the amount you can truly risk much easier to see.
How to use it
- Define which savings are reserved for household emergencies.
- Exclude that amount from available startup cash.
- Keep it in a separate account or tracking category.
- Do not use it to cover optional business purchases.
The free StartupCostCheck asks you to work from cash genuinely available to the business. Keeping the emergency fund outside the plan makes the result more honest.
Short definitions of the money words behind a safe business start: runway, burn, risk budget, what to buy now and what to delay.
Check my startup runway