Executive Summary
The JPMorganChase Institute’s latest Household Finance Pulse examines how U.S. households are managing cash in 2025 and offers a detailed view into consumer finances in today’s economic environment, drawing on de-identified data from 4.7 million Chase households. The key takeaway is that, while balances in checking and savings accounts are lower than expected, total cash reserves may actually be in better shape than they first appear.
Key Findings:
- Balances in checking and savings accounts are still below where we would expect them to be based on historical trends.
- Total cash reserves (bank accounts plus CDs, brokerages, etc.) show a different picture and have returned to positive growth, rising by about 3 to 5 percent year over year in 2025.
- Lower-income households appear to be leading this turnaround, seeing the most growth since mid-2024.
With interest rates still elevated and continuing questions about consumer resilience, this report offers helpful insight into how households are navigating the current economy.
Amid growing uncertainty in the economy, understanding how households are managing their cash is one of the clearest ways to assess their financial health.
During the pandemic, a combination of government relief efforts and limited spending opportunities helped households build more cash in their checking and savings accounts than ever before. But as government supports ended and normal economic activity resumed, those balances began to fall. At the same time, inflation soared and further eroded the real value of balances. The Institute has been closely tracking the rise and fall of bank balances in our ongoing Household Finances Pulse series, with our most recent release showing that in 2023 bank balances had returned to normal levels compared to historical trends but then continued to decline.
Is it concerning that bank balances are below what pre-pandemic trends suggest is normal? Unusually low bank balances could be a sign of current or future financial vulnerability. But they could also be a result of households investing more, seeking higher returns from elevated interest rates in other kinds of accounts.
To answer that question, we expanded our measure of cash reserves to include estimates of balances in other liquid accounts like brokerages and money market accounts. Using de-identified administrative banking data for 4.7 million households that bank with Chase, we measure not only bank account balances but the running total of transfers to investment and other accounts to approximate total cash reserves., We find that while inflation-adjusted balances in checking and savings accounts remain low with a flat growth trajectory, total cash reserves have likely been rising since mid-2024 and are approaching historical growth trends.
Household bank balances remain below historical trends
During the pandemic, balance growth dramatically outpaced historical trends and households accrued large cash balances. To understand whether households have maintained unusually high balances or have resumed pre-pandemic behavior, we compare balances to historical trends which households presumably would have followed absent disruptions from the pandemic. The latest data show that households’ bank balances are currently below what we would have expected based on historical trends.
Figure 1 shows this by tracking relative balance growth: the change in seasonally-adjusted monthly median real bank balances—checking and savings accounts—indexed to the median bank balance in 2019. As households age, their incomes tend to increase and they tend to spend and save more, resulting in higher cash balances over time. In historical data, household bank balances have an annual growth rate of 6.9 percent. We observe much higher than usual balance growth during the pandemic and its associated policy responses, with balances peaking after the last round of EIP checks were deposited in March 2021, and declining through 2023. The rate of decline slowed over time, flattening in 2024, and median bank balances were up 23 percent in May 2025. This is lower than the 40 percent we would have expected based on typical balance growth over a six-year period.