I've never had an emergency fund because I purchased my first home as soon as I could with all my salary going into my savings account which also served as an offset account with the full amount offset against my mortgage to keep the interest down, so I had access to my savings whenever I needed it & when I didn't, the full amount would be used to reduce the interest on my mortgage repayments - in effect maximizing the full amount of my savings.

Since the demand for programmers has always been good wherever I've lived I've always opted for higher paying contracting gigs since I was never concerned about job security, i.e. before kids, I'd most likely be more risk averse and look for permanent roles after starting a family.

After I paid off my mortgage my expenses came down and after saving ~6 months of living expenses (easy w/o rent/mortgage) was able to take the leap to quit my FT job and go off on my own to create a commercial product which I worked on tirelessly until achieving my financial independence goals.