so it could be a bad thing to deplete your emergency fund based on something that might not exactly even be your own emergency, and then end up experiencing your own emergency prior to your being able to replenish your emergency fund... .. so yeah a lot of times it can feel as if th e emergency fund, reserves and float are just sitting around and not really doing anything.. but then all of a sudden when you need them, then they can surely end up coming in handy.
if not that we are not always truthful to ourselves, some of the things we call emergency situations are things we can cope with or figure out an alternative way of meeting them without necessarily going into using our emergency funds or worse of, using our holdings. But the thing is that because you have some reserve funds, the urge to use it will always come and even when you don't want to, it will appear as though you're hurting yourself when you have the means not to. Like so many persons have pointed out in this thread, it's good to define what kind of event to qualify as an emergency one so you won't always run and make use of your emergency funds when an emergency situation hasn't occured and when emergency finally happens you're left with no option and your holding becomes the only option available.
An emergency funds is basically a shield that protect your investment from being tampered with and whenever you allow minor event to take out your emergency funds, you've exposed your holding to being tampered with whenever a real unexpected event happens.