Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions.
Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers.
Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information.
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey.
Bankrate follows a strict editorial policy, so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers.
We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.
Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
Americans aren’t feeling as keen about their household finances, judging from a dip in Bankrate’s Financial Security Index into negative territory after six months of upbeat readings.
For the first time since February, the index has fallen to a level below 100 — terrain that indicates deteriorating financial security compared to a year ago. A reading above 100 means improving financial security.
The index slipped 1 point in September, to 99.5. It’s down more than 3 points from the all-time high of 102.7, reached in June of this year.
|
Bankrate’s Financial Security Index gauges how Americans feel today versus a year ago on vital financial matters. An index value of less than 100 indicates declining levels of financial security; a value greater than 100 reveals higher levels of security compared to 12 months ago.
|
Consumers’ uneasiness about their debt, net worth and overall financial situation have all increased this month, with feelings about debt taking the biggest swing, says Greg McBride, CFA, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. Twenty-one percent now feel less comfortable with their debt than they did a year ago, versus 17 percent who feel more comfortable. In August, things were more even.
“Savings remains a drag on financial security,” McBride notes, “with those feeling less comfortable with their savings now, compared to one year ago, outnumbering those who are more comfortable by better than 2-to-1.” He adds that when you break down the survey results into age groups, income brackets or education levels, no subset of the population is feeling better about their savings these days.
The monthly survey that Bankrate uses to compile the Financial Security Index also asks about job security. There, McBride sees a bright spot: Just roughly 1 out of 8 employed Americans — 12 percent — feels less secure at work, versus a year ago. That’s a new low for the survey, which began in December 2010.
Share