Enough to cover filing fees, legal and business-plan costs, and your household while your current status continues, separate from the qualifying capital itself. Because that capital must stay at risk, treat it as unavailable. Contractual repayment terms may exist in a project, but no immigration outcome guarantees you get money back.
Fees, escrow and the money you can still reach
Ask which payments are due at filing and which are staged, and read escrow release conditions so you know when funds leave your control. If you are still in the process of investing, some arrangements can qualify without every dollar transferred first; confirm that against your documents. Obtain written return and timing terms, preserve any oral representations and have counsel assess their effect; do not treat assurances alone as guaranteed recovery.
Escrow language is where expectations and documents part company. A release condition that reads on approval may in fact mean on a specified filing event, and that difference decides when the money stops being reachable. The record answering it is the escrow agreement itself rather than the offering summary, and specifically the clause naming the release trigger and the party who instructs the escrow agent.
Read that clause before signing anything else. The condition it sits under does not bend: the capital must be at risk, so treat it as unavailable from the moment it is committed, and no contractual repayment term converts an immigration outcome into a guarantee. Hypothetical example: a pension consulting investor reads the release clause and learns the funds leave their control at filing rather than at approval.