Does it feel like an emergency expense, like a hospital visit or pricey car repair, will leave you in financial doldrums? You’re not alone. A new Bankrate survey shows around half of American have less emergency savings than they have in credit card debt.
Does it feel like an emergency expense, like a hospital visit or pricey car repair, will leave you in financial doldrums? You’re not alone.
A new Bankrate survey shows around half of Americans have less emergency savings than they have in credit card debt.
The survey showed around 44% of respondents said they have more emergency savings than credit card debt, but 29% said they have more credit card debt than emergency savings and 19% say they have neither credit card debt nor savings.
According to Stephen Kates, a financial analyst for Bankrate, the issue is not spread equally across generations.
“Younger Americans, no surprise, are more likely to say that they have neither debt nor emergency savings,” he said. “They simply have had less time to accumulate either one.”
Kates said these statistics have been fairly in-line with prior years, which is very concerning to him.
“A majority (58%) of Americans are saying that growing their savings, improving the amount of money that they have in their emergency fund, is a priority of theirs,” Kates said. “But only a small percentage of those people are actually making meaningful progress, and that is one of the things that, to me, jumped out as possibly the most concerning.”
According to the study, 21% of respondents are prioritizing paying down their credit card debt and another 31% are prioritizing both paying off debts and building their savings.
Kates said not having an emergency fund can put you in “a precarious position.”
“It isn’t bad financial management to pop a tire, have your brakes go, to run over a nail or have a medical emergency. Those things can happen to any of us at any time, whether we are great with money or not. Not having an emergency fund leaves you one crisis away from having to depend on some sort of loan or revolving debt,” Kates said.
He said there are small steps that you can take to improve your finances and increase that emergency fund.
Kates suggested that if you receive biweekly paychecks, use months like January, where you received three pay checks in one month, as a way to improve your financial position. Try saving one of those checks.
If you receive a tax refund this year, use your return to jump-start your savings.
Kates said most people may be getting even more money back due to recent legislation.
“I’m not going to tell you that everybody needs to have $5,000 in an emergency fund right away. That’s not realistic,” Kates said.
“If you can put away a couple hundred dollars over the course of the rest of 2026, you have infinitely decreased the likelihood that you would have to go into debt, if you had some sort of an unexpected expense. A little bit goes a very long way.”
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