<prompt> Human: The notion of an emergency fund is often mentioned in PF. I needed mine this week, but for what Ive deemed is an uncommon situation. Hence, this post.I went to the bank to deposit some work-expense checks. This is rare for my job developer. Its not something I do often.At the counter, everything was going fine w the deposit, until it wasnt. The teller started getting some strange looks on her face. Said Ill be back. Comes back and asks whos on the account. Just me. Uhh, do you know someone named Wilbur?Nope. Are you sure? Yep.It turns out someone had got their another name on the debit card for my account checking. And, when they listed the information for this person, they were in a different state, and they had my social security number, too.Quickly I am marched to see someone at desk. Im told the best solution is to immediately close the account and open a new one.Heres where the emergency fund comes in: this account has everything auto-deducted out of it Mortgage, utilities, car, IRA transfers, savings transfers, etc as well as auto-pay into it paycheck.I realized that some bills are still to be auto deducted out of the old account, and Id soon need funds in the account to cover. As I started logging into each company to change the auto payment information, some say it can take 2-4 weeks to register.Without the ability to fund the new account from savings, for a month temporarily, I could be in a real bind by not being able to control when the auto-payments transfer from either the old account or new.Lesson learned: always try to have at least a months worth of expenses in readily accessible funds to get you out of a bind. I hope this encourages people to save, because its not always a spending emergency such as a new Air Conditioner or auto repair that youll need it for.  <response>: Even with autopay on, every place I have ever seen lets you make a manual payment and will then skip the autopay when the balance is 0. 