A new survey of 1,000 Americans from Go Banking Rates found that 49 percent of respondents are living paycheck to paycheck, and 61 percent lack the savings to cover six months of expenses.
MarketWatch infers that the nation is ill-equipped for another recession. Baby Boomers are still reeling: 42 percent of people age 55 to 64 said they lack six months of savings, and 47 percent said they were living paycheck to paycheck. Retirement will be a challenge.
Plus, many people in Generation X had their careers derailed and peak earnings wiped out by the Great Recession.
These people don’t have savings to tide them through another blight in the job market. They don’t have backup streams of income. They don’t even know what a recession might mean for their investments, with the result that they have not made any preparations.