Friday, April 10th 2020, 6:45 am
With more than 16 million Americans now jobless, many people await promised federal payments — a key part of the U.S. government's $2.2 trillion economic relief package in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Adults with income below $75,000 are due to receive $1,200 each, with the first checks expected to land within days.
Some people will likely see the payments hit their accounts through direct deposit early next week, with the first round of checks starting the week of April 13, Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan said in a blog post. That first round is expected to include 60 million payments to Americans.
Yet while the money is set to start flowing, millions may be in for a wait of weeks or even months. That's due to the staggered approach taken by the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department, which are first directing payments to taxpayers who have supplied their direct-deposit information to the tax agency through their 2018 or 2019 tax returns. That first round will include Social Security recipients who have provided direct-deposit information with the federal tax returns, Dingell said.
The money can't come a minute too soon for millions of Americans. Despite a record 11-year economic expansion, many households in the U.S. remain a few missed paychecks away from financial disaster. Before the pandemic, about 1 in 3 said they were were already within three missed paychecks of needing to either borrow money or skip bills, according to new research from Northwestern Mutual.
"Many Americans entered this current ordeal in a relatively fragile place," said Christian Mitchell, executive vice president & chief customer officer at Northwestern Mutual. With the coronavirus impacting jobs across the country, he noted, "The situation has deteriorated for lots of Americans."
Mitchell said he found it surprising that so many Americans were a few paychecks away from a financial pinch given years of economic growth until the coronavirus impacted the economy last month. He recommends that families take time to assess their financial situation, developing a plan for navigating the current crisis, such as determining whether they have assets they can draw on in an emergency.
April 10th, 2020
May 2nd, 2024