An emergency fund or a contingency fund

I once saw an interesting video on YouTube about investing. The main point it made was, in a nutshell, that before you even start investing, you should first pay off your debts (particularly consumer loans, credit cards, etc.) and then start building up a solid emergency fund. All of this should happen before you even think of investing a single, hard-earned euro in shares or ETFs. The target figure given here was 10,000 dollars, which I have now converted into euros for the sake of simplicity. As I am currently 100 per cent invested and do not have an emergency fund, I have decided to build one up. At the moment, I have €55.84 to get started – which is half a per cent of the target amount. At the moment, the whole thing looks like this – and, unfortunately, it’s still looking a bit sad.

To build up my savings a bit faster, I’ve decided to set aside €50 a month for my emergency fund. On top of that – because of my long train journeys to work – I take part in paid online surveys. These ‘polls’ also bring in a bit of money, which I plan to put into my emergency fund. However, this money comes in quite irregularly.The emergency fund is actually meant to be the third pillar itself – I’ve decided to invest the whole amount in a money market ETF, specifically one that pays out dividends. The interest will then be reinvested until the target amount of €10,000 is reached. I’ve chosen this money market ETF. The dividends and the occasional survey rewards are reinvested as soon as €50 has been accumulated. It might take a while, but starting is half the battle. How did you build up your emergency fund, and where do you keep yours?