Have gone through spells of no income (job loss, etc) and doing it with no savings vs savings is... far less stressful. And the sun rises in the east - Capt Obvious here. With a tightened, budget, we've got a burn rate of around $3k/month. Loose budget, might be $4k/month. At this rate, we've got probably 2-3 years of cash to weather some 'no income' time period. There's still some stress and other emotions come up without 'real income' coming in, but nothing like going slowly in to debt while not seeing any way out.

Glad you got another job, and hopefully you're getting out of debt again, and ideally you can build a larger safety net for the future.