In an economy where inflation erodes savings, holding cash feels like losing. So people skip the boring step and go straight to investing — often with money they cannot afford to lock away. Then the car breaks down, or a medical bill lands, or a job ends, and the investment has to be sold at exactly the wrong moment.

An emergency fund is not an investment. It is what protects your investments from your life. Three to six months of essential expenses, held somewhere boring and liquid, is what allows you to leave the rest untouched through a bad quarter — which is the entire mechanism by which long-term investing works.

In the Nigerian context this matters more, not less. Income is often irregular, family obligations arrive without warning, and access to affordable credit is limited. The person without a buffer does not just lose returns — they borrow at punishing rates to cover a gap the buffer would have absorbed.