Half of Millennials Have at Least a Three-Month Emergency Fund

Photo credit: Cindy Shebley, CC BY 2.0.

Millennials are getting serious about saving for emergencies — but don’t get too excited, because so are non-Millennials. (It’s an intergenerational trend!)

We’ll start with a quote from Money:

Fifty percent of individuals aged 18-36 now say they have enough savings to cover at least three months’ worth of expenses in the case of an emergency, according to a survey from banking information site Bankrate.com. That’s a smidge higher than the 49 percent of people aged 56 and up who have at least three months of emergency savings.

When you go to the source, you learn that 24 percent of adults (of all surveyed ages) have no emergency savings, which is a lot of people — but it’s also the lowest percentage of no-emergency-savings adults in the survey’s history. That’s good news, and so is this:

Also, 31 percent have what’s considered an adequate savings cushion: enough to cover six months’ worth of expenses or more. That’s the highest Bankrate has seen in the seven years we’ve been asking about that.

Right now I have enough saved to cover between four and six months’ worth of expenses, depending on whether I cut back to basic expenses only or maintain my current level of spending. What about you? Have you increased your emergency fund in the past year?

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