Suze Orman warns that workers’ emergency savings are so threadbare that they’re unraveling retirement accounts and using credit for crises

“No one in this country should have to skip a meal or delay medical care because a car repair came first — yet that’s exactly what 41% of workers told us they’re doing,” Orman said.

SecureSave surveyed over 1,000 working Americans aged 18 to 65 in June. One in four had no emergency fund at all while 67% had less than three months’ expenses set aside. Far less.

At least 45% had less than a month’s expenses saved up. This is consistent with an 2025 Empower survey that found that Americans’ had a median $500 in emergency savings.

That’s why many workers are doing without when faced with a crisis — choosing between food and car repairs, for example. Many more are turning to credit cards to stay afloat.

Concerningly, one in four workers dips into retirement savings to cover unexpected expenses. Some report that they don’t think they’ll be able to retire at all due to the snowball effect of debt.

Moneywise reached out to Craig Copeland, director of Wealth Benefits Research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), to find out what can be done to help American workers build up their emergency savings in the short term to protect their long-term financial security.

Why employers offer emergency-fund savings plans

One of the reasons Orman recommends an emergency fund is to reduce financial anxiety, which not only keeps workers up at night but distracts them at work.

Three in four report that financial worries affect their motivation on the job, according to a 2026 survey by CAPTRUST, a financial advisory firm. It can lead to absenteeism. In fact, 38% of SecureSave survey respondents said they’d skipped work due to financial woes.

There’s a price tag for all this lost productivity in the U.S.: $183 billion annually, according to a November 2025 Fidelity report. That’s motivation for employers to get involved, with 77% of employers telling EBRI that they had or planned to offer emergency savings plans to employees.

Copeland noted that some firms have set up emergency savings plans tied to workplace retirement savings under the SECURE 2.0 Act. Such plans may:

• Allow employees to take out emergency loans or even withdraw up to $1,000 penalty-free from 401(k) retirement plans.
• Offer pension-linked emergency savings accounts (PLESAs) to workers earning $150,000 or less. Workers can save up to $2,500 in after-tax contributions in these accounts. Any more than that is redirected into their workplace retirement savings plan.

As Copeland said, there are some disadvantages to such plans. PLESAs are complicated. Not only is there the $150,000 income cutoff, but payroll administrators have to track the $2,500 contribution limit for every employee. And $2,500 is not enough to cover a lot of emergencies, he added.

“Let’s say you need a roof repair or your engine is kaput,” Copeland told Moneywise. “Those repairs can easily go past $2,000 and you don’t have anything left over for it.”

Moreover, from a personal finance point of view, it’s not ideal to associate emergency savings with retirement accounts, he said.

“It’s good to think of those things as two separate sources of funds, although there are sometimes catastrophic situations where you may need to dip into retirement savings,” he said.

Delta offers emergency savings incentives

Josh Jessup agrees. He’s Delta Air Lines’ general manager of global retirement and financial wellness. In 2023, Delta launched an emergency savings program for employees in partnership with Fidelity.