How to build an emergency fund for when benefits fall short
Keep must-pay bills and agreed repayments current, then build a €500 to €1,000 pot. Clear credit you can keep dipping into, like a card or an overdraft, then size your reserve.
Financial Protection
Insurance, emergency funds, and the dull safety net whose entire job is to stop one bad year from undoing ten good ones.
Financial protection is the dull part of personal finance, and it’s dull on purpose. Its job is to make sure that one bad year, whether that’s an illness or a market fall just before you retire, doesn’t undo the ten good ones before it.
A lot of that protection already exists, provided by the state or by your employer, and most people don’t know how much of it they’ve got until they need it. So several pieces here start with what’s already there. Sick pay covers who pays you and from which day. Unemployment benefit covers how long each country keeps paying. The redundancy guide separates the part of a package that’s already yours by law from the part that’s being offered. Employer pension contributions turn out to mean different things in different countries.
Then there’s what you add yourself. The insurance piece works by subtraction, starting with what you’re already covered for before anything gets bought. Liquidity gets its own guide, which sorts your money by how fast you can actually reach it. And the savings-account guide is about what you keep after tax and inflation, and how deposit protection works if a bank fails.
Retirement gets its own set: why starting early matters, which European pensions keep up with prices, and whether the 4% rule survives a European retirement. There’s also a guide to spotting investment scams, which comes down to checking the firm rather than the pitch, and one on the worry that money problems bring with them.
The tools include a statutory redundancy calculator, a retirement drawdown calculator, and an emergency-fund calculator.
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Our best attempts.
What insurance do you actually need: subtract before you buy
Most insurance is priced above your expected loss, by design. Subtract your state, employer and savings, and only the real gap is worth a policy.
Sick pay in Europe: who pays you, and from which day
Up to two years of employer-paid sick leave in the Netherlands, none in Portugal. Nine countries, and the percentage everybody quotes rarely decides.
How to spot an investment scam: check the firm, not the pitch
Two registers and a warning list. That is the check that works on an investment firm, because the pitch, the dashboard and the profit on it are all theirs.
More posts
Unemployment benefit in Europe: when nine states stop paying
Nine European states, six numbers each. Whether your record lets you in, by when you must claim, what the state replaces, and the date payments stop.
Employer pension contributions mean five different things across Europe
Cross a border and employer pension contributions become five different things. Ireland and Britain force a minimum in; Spain requires nothing at all.
Inflation-proofing retirement: which European pensions keep up
Your pension rose this year; prices rose faster. Which European pensions keep pace with inflation, and how to defend the slices that quietly erode.
The 4% rule for European retirees: does it still hold up in 2026?
3% to 3.5%, not 4%: that's the realistic safe withdrawal rate for a European retiree living off a portfolio. Here's what moves it, and why.
Why retirement planning matters: the real cost of waiting
About 41% of Europeans surveyed pay into no private or workplace pension, and each year you wait costs more than the payments you skip. Here's that cost, in euros.
Liquidity in personal finance: which of your own money can you reach?
Liquidity is which of your own money you can actually reach. Map it onto European wrappers, then size the cash buffer none of the locked stuff can rescue.
Money and mental health: how to calm the worry and the bank balance
Money worry and a worried mind feed each other in two loops. Here's how to ease both at once, with free EU mental-health and debt help near the end.
Tax·
Redundancy packages explained: which part is already yours
A redundancy package is a stack, not a single number. Part is yours by law, the rest is negotiable, and the tax-free slice changes country by country.
The best savings account in Europe is the one that lets you keep the most
The headline rate on a savings account is rarely what you keep. Post-tax yields in Germany, France, Ireland, Slovenia and beyond tell a very different story.