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Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the lesson is to save.

There's a huge number of very unlikely risks. Too many risks to carefully avoid them all. Something unexpected will happen. Insurance can help, but as the articls shows, not always.

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Seriously. I don't know a lot of people for whom a surprise $50k bill would be "unfortunately" rather than "disastrously".

I don't think there are that many people. 50K is a lot.

I know plenty of people that live in $1MM apartments that doubled in value over the last 10 years. So while they might not be able to "spare" $50k, it's not that big a deal overall. Of course I know other people for which that would be a lifetime of savings.

I assume they are not silly enough to buy a house then right?

Is it "silly" to buy a house when you don't have $50k in your emergency fund? I have been very financially lucky, but I'd still have to sell a lot of stock -- dipping significantly into funds earmarked for other things -- to pay off a surprise $50k expense. I certainly couldn't have done so right after having bought my house.

This after a study reveals more than half of Americans have less than $1k in savings.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that in extreme cases, most people would simply go bankrupt or starve. Something to think about when you root for certain laws and politicians..

Just to play devils' advocate, that's less than $1k _in a savings account_. Many people store cash straight in their checking accounts or have much more than $1k in stocks and bonds which aren't too hard at all to liquidate, and the figure you're quoting didn't account for that.

You're parsing wrong here. It means people don't have that much liquid. As in saved.

Sure, that's what I said. :)

How is that correct? Almost 70% of americans own their own house. Are you telling me that one can get a mortgage and make a down payment for a new house with only $1k in savings?

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