15 personal-finance lessons we can all learn from the year of Covid-19 An accessible emergency fund can help alleviate the need for drastic cuts in spending when facing temporary shocks to your income (Shutterstock)Premium Jonathan I. Shenkman , The Wall Street Journal Among them: You really do have to plan for emergencies, and your personal-finance decisions don’t exist in a vacuum Share Via Read Full Story With 2020 in the rearview mirror, and the end of the pandemic (fingers crossed) in sight, there’s a lot of economic damage to be assessed. But there are also a lot of personal-finance lessons we can learn—lessons that will put us in good stead, whatever the economic future holds.