3 ways to protect your money if the U.S. defaults on its debt (2024)

FAQs

3 ways to protect your money if the U.S. defaults on its debt? ›

That means tamping down on excess spending, making a budget, and shoring up emergency savings to cover at least three months of living expenses. Since a debt default would likely send interest rates soaring, any credit card debt you're saddled with may soon cost you more.

If you have money in U.S. government money market funds, U.S. Treasury money market funds, or treasury bills maturing in June or July SELL those securities and hold cash deposits or perhaps even prime money market funds until the debt ceiling crisis is over.

The debt ceiling can also affect your finances by potentially causing increased interest rates, market volatility and economic uncertainty, which could lead to higher borrowing costs, impact investments and potentially affect job security and economic stability.

U.S. Household Debt Is at an All-Time High

This includes mortgages, home equity revolving debt, auto loans, credit cards, student loans and other consumer lending such as retail cards. The total household debt of $17.3 trillion entering 2024 is a new high for the U.S.

“If the debt ceiling is not raised and the government defaults on its debt obligations, investors may turn to gold and other precious metals to protect their wealth.” The largest precious metals ETF is SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), with $60.7 billion in net assets. Its annual expense ratio is 0.40%.

Diversify Your Portfolio

Having a diversified 401(k) of mutual funds or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that invest in stocks, bonds and even cash can help protect your retirement savings in the event of an economic downturn.

Under normal conditions, the Treasury sends Social Security payments one month in arrears. That means the check you receive in June covers your benefits for the month of May. If the debt ceiling isn't raised, the Social Security payments due to be sent to beneficiaries in June would most likely still go out.

That means tamping down on excess spending, making a budget, and shoring up emergency savings to cover at least three months of living expenses. Since a debt default would likely send interest rates soaring, any credit card debt you're saddled with may soon cost you more.

The U.S. defaulting on its debt is an unlikely scenario due to the existence of the debt ceiling and the appeal of U.S. bonds for foreign investors.

Loss given default (LGD) is the estimated amount of money a bank or other financial institution loses when a borrower defaults on a loan. LGD is depicted as a percentage of total exposure at the time of default or a single dollar value of potential loss.

Are Americans taking loans to buy food? ›

Last year, some 15 million consumers — or 6.5% of the US population — reported using BNPL installment loans to pay for groceries or manage their weekly food expenses, according to research from PYMNTS Intelligence. Out of that share, about 5.4% of the households using BNPL to afford groceries were low-income.

The report shows total household debt increased by $184 billion (1.1%) in the first quarter of 2024, to $17.69 trillion. The report is based on data from the New York Fed's nationally representative Consumer Credit Panel.

The $34 trillion gross federal debt includes debt held by the public as well as debt held by federal trust funds and other government accounts. In very basic terms, this can be thought of as debt that the government owes to others plus debt that it owes to itself.

Expect volatility in bonds

US Treasuries are considered to be the world's safest assets because they are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, but the uncertainty over a debt ceiling deal adds risk. With Treasuries, the key question is when investors will be repaid, not if.

Even if the Treasury does default, money market fund experts point to several reasons why a repeat of the Reserve Primary Fund debacle is extremely unlikely. A U.S. debt default would affect only a small number of Treasury securities, namely those that mature on the date that the Treasury's cash runs out.

In a CDS, following a default by the reference entity, the protection buyer extracts value from the contract through physical or cash settlement.

We infer the likelihood of a U.S. default from these CDS premiums, and estimate an increase in the market-implied default probability from about 0.3–0.4% in 2022, to around 4% in April 2023, which is lower than it was in July 2011 and about where it was in October 2013.

Suppose you buy a Treasury bill with a $1,000 face value for $950. At maturity, you will be paid $1,000. The $50 difference between the $950 purchase price and the $1,000 face value is considered the interest. Like Treasury bonds and notes, T-bills have no default risk since they're backed by the U.S. government.