Patent ID: 8751377

Claim:
A method for providing an emergency financial reserve, the method comprising: receiving, by a computing device, terms of an emergency financial reserve agreement associated with a customer, wherein the terms provide for (1) an emergency financial reserve to be configured as a line-of-credit that is replenished by the customer repaying previously accessed amounts of the line-of-credit, (2) the customer to receive access to the emergency reserve line-of-credit based upon occurrence of one of one or more predetermined covered events and (3) provide for an emergency reserve-providing entity to receive a fee from the customer in exchange for the emergency financial reserve; storing, in computing device memory, the terms of the emergency financial reserve agreement; receiving a covered event first indication from the customer that indicates an occurrence of one of the one or more covered events; verifying an initial occurrence of the covered event; verifying, by the computing device, an initial validity of the emergency financial reserve; and automatically providing, by the computing device, the customer with access to a first predetermined portion of the emergency reserve line-of-credit for a predetermined first period of time in response to the verification of the initial occurrence of the covered event and verification of the initial validity of the emergency financial reserve, wherein the first predetermined amount is less than a total amount of the emergency financial reserve line-of-credit and is accessible for the predetermined first period of time; receiving, from the customer proximate in time to expiration of the predetermined first period of time, a covered event second indication that indicates that one or more of the covered events continue to occur; verifying a continual occurrence of the one or more covered events; verifying, by the computing device, a continual validity of the emergency financial reserve; automatically providing, by the computing device, the customer with access to a second predetermined portion of the emergency reserve line-of-credit for a predetermined second period of time in response to the verification of the continual occurrence of the covered event and verification of the continual validity of the emergency financial reserve; determining that the customer has accrued an owed emergency reserve balance as a result of accessing the first and second portions of the emergency line-of-credit; and canceling, by the computing device, the owed emergency reserve balance based upon (i) determining that the customer has accrued the owed emergency reserve balance as a result of accessing the first and second portions of the emergency reserve line of credit and (ii) the terms of the of emergency financial reserve agreement including an emergency reserve protection feature.