If you’re like me and you read a bunch of other personal finance blogs, you’ve already read a ton of articles that say how important an emergency fund is. Yes, having money stashed away is really great when your water heater decides to go, or your car dies, but no one ever tells you how much should be in there. Not knowing how much to save really makes it difficult to make it your goal to save. It was for me anyway.

In a perfect world, this number would be the same for everyone, but alas, the days of utopia are not here yet. Here’s my perspective on the whole idea.

First off, make your saving automatic. If you have to go through the trouble of going to the bank to deposit the money in a special account, it won’t happen. Either sign up for direct deposit, or make an automatic scheduled transfer through your bank. I started out with $20 a week going into my ING account, it was painless and the money just seemed to grow magically. Then Rob started contributing $25 a week with an automatic transfer through his bank and I get giddy whenever I check the account now.

If you don’t have anything saved yet, make $1000 your initial goal. $1000 can cover most small emergencies life can throw at you. Or at least get you through until you figure out what to do next. If you stash $20 a week away, it will take you just under a year to save up $1000. To boost this along, put any unexpected money into your emergency fund. For example, if you have a yard sale or sell some of your stuff on eBay, put the profits in your fund. Or if you get a holiday bonus at work, take a little to splurge with and stash the rest away.

Now, it might sound counter intuitive to tell you to put that money into savings when you have this mountain of debt looming over you. I would agree with you if I didn’t learn first hand how great it feels to pay CASH when my A/C broke during the heat wave of 2009. In the past, I would have just written a check out of my credit card and continued the cycle of debt. I felt so good NOT putting more on my credit card, I became even more motivated to fund my savings account and replace the few hundred dollars I had taken. My debt plan is still on track and the only discomfort I felt was the 100 degree heat in my house.

After a while, your goal will be reached and you’ll have this pile of money sitting in the bank, tempting you. To conquer this temptation, I set up a “CD ladder”. Once you have $1500 in there, put $500 in a 12 month CD. This leaves your $1000 cushion available for emergencies, and $500 working a little harder for your patience. You can still get to it if something major happens, and I would much rather pay an early withdrawal fee than rack up interest charges on my credit card. With my particular plan, I put away about $100 a month, so every six months, I open a new CD for $500. So far, so good!

And now the answer to the ultimate question! How much should your end goal be? That really depends on you, but I do have one hard and fast rule to consider. Save up X month’s worth of your total expenses. For some this should be three months, for others it should be more like six month’s worth. Of course, if you lost your income completely, you would cut back even more and you could stretch your budget. Most importantly, celebrate your milestones! Once you get to your $1000 mark, take some time to reflect on how far you’ve come. One month’s worth of expenses deserves a little splurge, and so on. Keep at it!