Emergency funds 911

Here's a post on Get Rich Slowly about emergency funds. He recommends putting away 3-6 months of basic living expenses in a cash, low-interest-bearing account. It's a good post, very thorough, and it's standard advice for the personal finance genre, but c'mon - 3 to 6 months? That's a downpayment for a house.

I'd guess we have about maybe one month in our emergency account, and it's sort of lucky we have that much, as we built it with the rather rare occurrences of a high holiday pulpit and a tax rebate. Plus, we're always battling against tapping into it to make our monthly bills. At this point, it could cover a car repair, or a low-grade medical situation, but if (God forbid ptui ptui ptui) I lost my job, well, we don't have enough in there to cover that.

This strikes me as the kind of advice that, if you were able to take it, you wouldn't need to be looking at frugality websites. It's also the kind of advice that makes people despair of ever being in a plus situation, if you ask me. (Advice that's impossible for the average person to follow is not good advice, imo.) Also, if you're saving so much this way, are you neglecting your retirement savings? That's another big goal that (based on financial advisors) I'm consistently underfunding.

So I'd be interested to know what people think about this, so leave a comment: how much (on a month basis) do you have in your emergency savings? Do you think it's enough - how much would you say is optimal?