{"id":907884,"date":"2026-09-27T23:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T23:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/907884\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T23:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T23:06:09","slug":"why-you-need-an-emergency-fund-and-how-to-work-out-how-big-it-should-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/907884\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you need an emergency fund and how to work out how big it should be"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sep 28, 2026 \u2013 5.00am<\/p>\n<p>Record household wealth has not saved Australian families from a cash-flow crunch: 27 per cent say they could not raise $4000 in an emergency within a week, according to the latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.afr.com\/policy\/economy\/employed-and-educated-but-poorer-what-australia-looks-like-now-20260924-p60zos\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">University of Melbourne\u2019s Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.afr.com\/policy\/economy\/employed-and-educated-but-poorer-what-australia-looks-like-now-20260924-p60zos\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The survey attributes this sharp spike in financial stress to higher living costs combined with flatlining real disposable incomes.<\/p>\n<p>Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sep 28, 2026 \u2013 5.00am Record household wealth has not saved Australian families from a cash-flow crunch: 27&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":907885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,184,185],"class_list":["post-907884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=907884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/907884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/907885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=907884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=907884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=907884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}