Conversation

Poll: What’s your financial backstop if the pandemic breaks your household’s income and you’ve exhausted emergency savings, unemployment benefits, if any, and maxed out credit cards as much as you dare?
  • Dip into retirement funds
    38.2%
  • Sell assets (car, house)
    14.9%
  • Close friends/family
    42%
  • Kindness of strangers
    4.9%
1,271 votesFinal results
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Replying to
Our situation: as student foreigners, we don’t qualify for any American relief. Our firm in Lima is freezing, and we have received no income in a couple of months. Outstanding payments are being stopped “until things go back to normal.” We’re already eating our retirement funds.
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Replying to
We have to stay, finish the program, and hope the job offers we have materialise. The shining light is we have received strong reassurances, even in this climate—to the point of being asked to stay when this began. It’s faith-based living, though, and a huge source of stress.
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