One-Third Of American Families Weren’t Prepared For Financial Emergencies, Even Before The Pandemic
There’s a reason we’re supposed to load our savings accounts with cash for a rainy day. You never know when a catastrophic financial event might occur. And without money in the bank, you could wind up in a dire situation that sends you into debt or even bankruptcy. Now, when we think about financial catastrophes, it’s easy to point to the coronavirus outbreak as a recent example. The pandemic has been a major health crisis that many are still grappling with. But it also upended a lot of people’s finances. And unfortunately, a large number of Americans weren’t prepared to deal with an event that instantly caused a massive wave of unemployment. In January of 2020, about 27% of U.S. families couldn’t come up with $2,000 for an unplanned expense within a month, according to the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center. And 33% of Americans were struggling to make ends meet before the pandemic began. It’s likely that many of these people suffered financially over the past 18 months. If you don’t have enough money in savings for emergencies, you could be in a scary position the next time a major financial crisis hits. If that’s the case, it pays to work on boosting your cash reserves. [as reported in Credit & Collection 9/22/21 e-newsletter]