When Sarah Ballard’s kitchen tile floor shifted and tiles began to crack, she knew she’d have to come up with $2,000 to make the fixes.
“A tilted tile could have sliced my foot open,” says Ballard, 38, of Jamestown, New York. “But I just didn’t have the money in the bank at the time.”
A combination of back-to-school expenses for kids and airplane tickets for the Labor Day weekend had left the family low on ready cash.
The classic emergency fund still eludes more than half of Americans, just like the Ballards, according to a new Bankrate Money Pulse survey.
Continue reading “Just 4 in 10 Americans have savings they’d rely on in an emergency”
