No surprise here, I guess: A survey by credit-comparison website CreditDonkey found that 41 percent of respondents have less than $500 of savings at any given time.
CreditDonkey.com: Nearly Half Have No Emergency Savings
The site surveyed 1,100 folks. Of that, 41 percent said they have less than $500 in emergency funds or other liquid savings. These findings aren’t far off from a similar study done by the Wall Street Journal back in 2011, which reported that half of us couldn’t come up with $2,000 within a few weeks if necessary.
From the CreditDonkey article:
It’s not what you may think: This 41% is made up not only of people living at or below the poverty line. They are also dual-income earners with nice homes, nice cars, nice toys, a 401K retirement savings plan, big mortgages. and big credit card bills. But if they ever get into a bind and need some quick cash – say, because of a car breakdown or an unexpected doctor visit – they don’t have it.
What’d they expect? Everywhere we turn, the Powers That Be instruct us to “Spend it all,” lest we get left behind our neighbors who are already doing their part by living entirely for today. And that’s regardless of income level. The good news is that our government and all related entities are working diligently to make sure everything we need (food, energy, education, and all that) gets cheaper by the day. (You believe that, right?)
Ah, no matter. We’ll just worry about the future when it gets here.
MikeM wrote:
Not sure why I’d reply here, but, I think peoples thinking goes beyond what you say about the “spend it all” attitude. I think people actually see their credit cards as their emergency funds. So if a car breaks down or an unexpected medical bill comes about, they will just charge it. They don’t realize that with high interest rates, etc. they put themselves on a sinking ship.
It’s odd that the number was 41%. I recently tried to calculate my personal savings rate. Add together all the money you save monthly (even if its marked for future purchases eg. car fund, emergency fund, vacation fund, etc.) and all the money that goes into retirement (including employer matches) and divide by your after-taxes-take-home-pay. Mine came to 41% – I was pretty impressed that with a family of four at approximately median income level we were doing that well with our budget. Gotta run…