Personal finance: Guidelines for emergency funds and deposit safety

Financial experts suggest that maintaining a personal financial reserve should be based on specific figures rather than intuition. A standard recommendation for an emergency fund is to keep a liquid reserve equivalent to two to three months of net salary to cover unexpected costs such as medical expenses, urgent home repairs, or sudden loss of income.

In Germany, the savings rate reached 11.5 percent in 2024. For those with larger savings, understanding deposit insurance is critical. In the German system, bank deposits are insured up to 100,000 euros per person, per bank. A common mistake made by savers is failing to realize that this protection limit applies to the total sum of all accounts held at a single institution—including checking, savings, and fixed-term deposits—rather than applying to each account individually.