I’m a single 23 year old and recently graduated college/started a nearly full time job. It’s not in my field of study but the pay is decent and I get good hours. I’ve decided to start the program despite having zero debt. My question is if I should save three or six months emergency fund.

A three month emergency fund for me would be 5,000 (that’s using my usual spending patterns plus bills) and six months would be 10,000. I feel that as a single person I should have the full six months fund. But when I was talking about it to my mom she mentioned that she was my ‘second emergency fund’.

My mom is well off and has paid for everything until I got my recent job. I could ask her for a thousand dollars tomorrow and she wouldn’t hesitate to give it to me. And she’s already said that she’ll pay any big bill until I get a job in my field.

I don’t want to take advantage of her, but I do have more that I want to save for than just emergencies (I’m planning to start fostering in a year or so and I have immigration expenses coming up). So what would you do? Three or six months?