A fascinating and troubling story from NPR this morning about Americans with little or no savings is worth a listen (or read) to get a sense of many Americans' financial vulnerability. Here's the opening:
In his inaugural address, President Obama talked about a country
where even "a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she
has the same chance to succeed as anybody else." But in reality, that's
not always the case. A new report
finds that one of the biggest obstacles for many Americans is that they
don't have the savings or assets they need to help them get ahead.
Nearly
44 percent of Americans don't have enough savings or other liquid
assets to stay out of poverty for more than three months if they lose
their income, according to Wednesday's report by the Corporation for
Enterprise Development. Almost a third have no savings accounts at all.
