How to Pass Your Own Stress Test

If you work on commission or otherwise have a salary that fluctuates, you want nine months of salary to draw on in an emergency. If you work on salary and stand to earn a severance if fired, you can probably get by with three months and still pass. Anything less, in either case, is the equivalent of getting a warning notice from the school dean. "Watch it, Frosh, you are headed for failure."

Beyond that, telltale signs of am impending failure of a personal stress test are:

Not paying off your credit card every month;
Your credit rating declines significantly;
You are late on any mortgage, utility or car payments; or
You're getting any sort of late notices in the mail.

If you are starting to fall short in any of these categories, you need to recalibrate what you are earning or spending, or both.

And if your credit card is a stubborn part of the problem, “just cut it up,” said Stark.

When you're auditing, remember that this is your life. You're not adding up these figures for a school class. The cost of failure is steep.

“I don’t think the government can run a birthday party,” said Stark, no fan of the Treasury Department’s bank stress test. But when it comes to your own private version, it’s easy to do, wholly accurate and, in the final estimation, essential to your future well-being.