<prompt> Human: Ive seen the chart and I get why an e-fund is important, but is it worth it to accelerate establishing that at the expense of lowering or putting a slow on my 401k contributions?My situation 28 yrs old - single - no kids recently finished paying off all my debt and loans do not own a house - renting an apartment no real plans to buy a house any time soon have a relatively new reliable truck with no current issues income is 55-60k yr currently putting 6 of check into 401k plan 275 month employer matches 100 up to 6 - so Im putting in enough to get the maximum match monthly take home pay after 6 and taxes is 2800 current monthly expenses 2400 working on lowering expenses - 2000 is a reasonable goal currently have 1200 in cash and 45k in 401k planAssuming I want 3 months of expenses saved up - 7.5K It would take me 16 months to build that savings up at my current rate of savings Or 8 months at my lowered monthly expenses rate of savings Or 6 months at my lowered expenses rate and added 250 savings from not contributing to 401k plan but at a loss of 1500 of company matching  <response>: Keep in mind that 7.5k for three months is 2,500 per month. Your budget is only having you spend 2,000 anyways...so now you actually only need 6,000. So it will actually only take you 8 months to save that money. Also, when youre in an emergency situation where you dont have a job, you would be cutting out your unnecessary expenses - so looking at your budget, I had your necessary expenses as rent, car insurance, phone, power, student loan, groceries, and kitty since you have to feed it or it would die - so 1,592, or 1,600 to make things easy. Now you only have to save for 6 months to reach your 3 month goal 1,600 x 3 months 4,800 technically. Really though, I would plan to save the 6,000 over 8 months. Dont stop your 401k contributions, its free money and you have no reason to stop them currently. So long as you are working on a e-fund, then you are fine. Additionally, you dont have zero cash, you do have 1,200, which is probably enough to get you through most emergencies. 