<prompt> Human: I was talking to my SO about wanting to purchase a new laptop, and considering floating the debt on a credit card for a few months. It would be about 60 in interest to own the laptop now, and do useful things with it for three months while I pay off the debt incurred.My SO suggested I just use my savings, which is my emergency fund, as opposed to incurring the credit debt and paying the interest over the 3 months. It got me to thinking, I could probably live on my debt a lot longer if I absolutely had to. So I guess this is a dual question:1. How do you estimate your emergency fund?2. If you want to purchase something that you would be willing to take on a minimal amount of credit debt for, would it be preferrable to just take the money out of your emergency fund?  <response>: I do it based on current levels of spending. In theory, that lets you remain normal while you deal with the emergency ie. losing your job. While Id probably naturally cut back, no one ever looks back and says man, my safety net was too big. : 