It's okay to have stimulus money> Spokane Journal of News

“When I suggest saving the stimulus, I don’t mean a short term, stick it in the bank, and pull it out in a couple of months,” says Michael Furrer, a financial adviser for Spokane-based Longbow Financial Services LLC, located in the Lincoln Building, at 818 W. Riverside, downtown. “I mean establishing a goal of where you want to be financially and begin taking the short- and intermediate-term steps to achieve your long-term saving and investment goal.”

Those ideas have less to do with ways to spend the payments of up to $1,400 a person authorized under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and more to do with how to invest it.

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If recipients of the stimulus payments don’t have to use all the funds to pay urgent or past-due expenses, they should consider establishing retirement accounts if they don’t have one, adding the money to existing retirement plans, or building an emergency savings.

Eligible families with children and adult dependents may also be provided with a $1,400 payment per dependent. The stimulus payments will be based upon the most recent tax return that the Internal Revenue Service has for tax filers.
Under the terms of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, eligible recipients with an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or less will receive a one-time stimulus payment of $1,400. Eligible joint filers with an adjusted gross income of up to $150,000 will receive a stimulus payment of $2,800.

Advisers say that the COVID-19 relief package presents an opportunity for U.S. residents to begin building on that equivalent of three-to-six-months’ of income as emergency savings that most didn’t have prior to the onset of the pandemic.

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