MW More Americans are raiding their emergency savings just to fill up their gas tanks
By Venessa Wong
Most people think of emergencies as job loss or a hospital bill. For many today, it's soaring energy costs.
Withdrawals from employer-sponsored emergency savings accounts tied to transportation costs are up 22% from a year earlier, according to SecureSave.
The average price of gas in the U.S. is now up 41% from a year ago at $4.46 a gallon, leading a growing number of Americans to tap into their emergency savings to cover their rising transportation expenses.
During the week of April 23, 11% of withdrawals from employer-sponsored emergency savings accounts were tied to transportation costs (which can include anything from gas to auto insurance and car repairs), up 22% from a year earlier, according to new data from SecureSave, a company that provides these accounts as an employee benefit.
Most people think of emergency savings as a cushion against job loss or sudden, large bills such as a hospital visit, but "most unexpected financial situations are small, and they're way more frequent than losing your job," said Devin Miller, co-founder of SecureSave. "A lot of people will go through their career without getting laid off, thankfully, but everybody is going to suffer through inflation."
More on this: Employer-sponsored emergency-savings accounts are becoming a hot perk. Here's how they work.
The top reasons SecureSave users said they tapped their emergency savings account during the April period (the app prompts users to specify their emergency when making a withdrawal) were general inflation, transportation, housing expenses and healthcare .
Soaring oil and gas prices have upended many household budgets in recent months. Thirteen percent of people recently cited energy costs as a top financial concern, the same share who were concerned about the cost of owning or renting a home, according to an April poll by Gallup.
To cope, 92% of consumers are actively trying to save money at the pump by using loyalty programs and credit-card rewards, or buying gas at club stores where prices tend to be lower than average, according to an April survey by Numerator. In addition, the survey said 78% of consumers are trying to use less gas by combining trips, driving less and working from home more. Nearly three in four people said they have cut back on other expenses such as dining out, travel, groceries and entertainment, Numerator found.
Energy prices are also impacting people's ability to save for the future, which Americans listed as their most common financial goal at the start of this year. After the war with Iran started, the personal saving rate, or the share of disposable income that people save, fell to 3.6% in March compared to 5.1% a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Then, the share of people in Numerator's poll who cut back on saving and investing due to gas prices jumped to 20% in April from 17% in March.
Related: $4 gas could test whether your company cares more about your financial well-being - or office attendance
Having contributions automatically deducted from people's paychecks to an emergency savings account can help workers stay on track with their goals even when prices rise, Miller said. SecureSave users are contributing about $100 a month to their accounts, up 45% since 2023. "Automating that money flow" has worked "tremendously well with 401(k)s and similar things," he said.
While many personal-finance experts now recommend having six months of expenses saved for emergencies, and at least $2,000 for basic financial resiliency, about 24% of people surveyed by Bankrate last year had no emergency savings at all.
The households hardest-hit by higher gas prices have been low- to middle-income households, especially people who make less than $40,000 a year. "Lower-income households' smaller wage base, combined with slower growth, means their wage gains over the past year have only just covered higher gas spending," according to new research from the Bank of America Institute.
To absorb recent gas and other price shocks - consumer prices were up 3.8% from a year ago in April - the lowest third of households by income (roughly less than $65,000 per year) increased their credit-card utilization more than other households relative to 2019 levels, and a growing share are making only the minimum payment on their credit-card accounts, the bank found in a separate report.
Read more: Inflation jumps to 3-year high, CPI shows, and that's not the end of it
They also increased usage of buy-now-pay-later services more than higher-income groups between January and March.
The Bank of America Institute authors noted the potential for gas prices to "further widen the 'K-shaped' split in consumer spending."
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-Venessa Wong
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May 27, 2026 15:31 ET (19:31 GMT)
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