Olde Hornet
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MSN
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Nearly three in 10 (28 percent) U.S. adults have no emergency savings, according to Bankrate’s latest Financial Security Index. One in four have a rainy day fund, but not enough money to cover three months’ worth of living expenses.
Getting into the habit of regularly saving money is critical, experts say. If you’re making automatic contributions to a 401(k) plan at work, you might as well have a portion of each paycheck deposited into a vehicle such as a high-yield savings account. Unfortunately, it’ll take a lot more than that to solve the so-called savings crisis.
Just 18 percent of Americans say they could live off their savings for at least six months. That’s the lowest percentage of people with an adequate savings cushion in nine years of conducting Bankrate’s poll.
Multiple factors have made it difficult to save for emergencies.
“Household expenses have gone up and in many cases incomes haven’t kept pace,” says Greg McBride, CFA, Bankrate’s chief financial analyst. “So if you haven’t been adding to that savings, that and the regularity of unplanned expenses can easily chip away at what once was an adequate savings cushion.”