How Much Cash Should You Keep at Home for Emergencies?

When a storm takes the power out regionally, the card readers, ATMs, and payment apps go with it, and the economy in your zip code becomes cash-only for a few days. FEMA's guidance is simply to have cash on hand in small bills. The number it does not give you is how much.

Start here: $150 to $500 covers what the first few days actually cost. A tank of gas, groceries, a prescription copay, ice, maybe a motel night. Double it toward $1,000 if your plan includes evacuating a family, because evacuation is a cash-burning event: fuel every few hundred miles, food on the road, a room at the end.

What the cash is for, line by line#

Thinking in line items beats picking a round number, because it sizes the stash to your household:

Add your own lines (pet boarding, tolls, a generator's worth of propane swaps) and the total lands naturally. For most families it lands inside that $150 to $500 band.

Small bills, boring hiding place, one rule#

The denomination mix matters more than the amount. Mostly twenties, tens, fives, and a sleeve of ones. When registers are down, clerks round to what they can make change for, and a hundred-dollar bill becomes a hundred-dollar purchase.

Keep it somewhere fireproof and unremarkable, not the sock drawer and not a decoy safe bought off a viral video. And know the insurance fine print before deciding the amount: most homeowner's and renter's policies cap stolen-cash coverage near $200. The cap is the quiet argument for keeping the home stash modest. This is the walking-around layer of your emergency fund, not the fund itself; the months-of-expenses money belongs in an account earning interest, exactly where a burglary or house fire can't touch it.

Where does the stash live in your paperwork? Note the amount and location in your emergency binder so a spouse can find it during the event you built it for, and list it in your go-bag checklist if evacuation is in your plans.

Keep it boring: the maintenance rhythm#

A cash stash fails two quiet ways. It evaporates in twenties borrowed for pizza, or it sits so long the amount no longer matches your life. Both have the same fix: treat it like a smoke alarm. Check it twice a year on the clock changes, replace what wandered off, and re-run the table above whenever the household changes. A new baby, a new commute, or a move to a bigger house all raise the line items.

Two timing notes from how storms actually play out. The ATM line forms when the forecast firms up, about 48 hours out, so topping up at the first watch beats joining that line. And after the event, spend the stash freely for what it was built for, then rebuild it the first calm week. A stash you are afraid to spend during the actual emergency was never an emergency fund, just a hiding place.

Cash buys what you forgot. Supplies are what you meant to have.#

Every line in that table above is a purchase you make because something was not already in the house. The cheaper version of most of them is the shelf: food, water, medicine, batteries, bought at normal prices on a normal week.

Provision Planner shows you which of those purchases your house has already covered, as days of food and water for your household, and which ones are still waiting to cost you storm prices. The cash covers the gap; the app shrinks it.