66 Million Americans Have No Emergency Savings

Many Americans are woefully ill-prepared for an unplanned expense, so much so that a whopping 66 million U.S. adults have zero dollars saved for an emergency, according to a new study.
When broken down by age, those in Generation X fared the worst: One-third of people ages 36 to 51 said they had saved nothing in an emergency fund. That compares with 27 percent of all others ages 18 or older, according to a Bankrate.com survey of 1,000 adults conducted earlier this month.

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Generally, the likelihood of having saved at least six months of expenses increases steadily after age 25, Bankrate said. Yet for Gen Xers, “those are the years when it catches up with you,” said Bankrate’s chief financial analyst Greg McBride.
“This underscores the fact that it takes time, especially because expenses grow faster than many Americans can save during the homebuying, family-raising years,” McBride said. “If you are not in the habit of saving regularly, whatever you have is going to get wiped out sooner rather than later.”
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