Household Finances Pulse through May 2025: Bank balances are flat but total savings are growing again

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.¹ 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.²,³ 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.⁴

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.⁵ 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.

Total cash reserves have been growing since mid-2024 after accounting for increased investment activity

The above trends are based only on checking and savings account balances, which raises the question: what do growth rates look like for total cash reserves across the full set of a household’s liquid accounts? High interest rates in recent years may have prompted households to keep less cash in their checking and savings accounts and more in accounts that yield higher returns. That would show up in our data as declining checking and savings account balances, impacting the results in Figure 1. Indeed, the use of investment brokerage accounts has increased notably in recent years, with households across the income distribution increasing engagement with investment accounts. The number of individuals making investing transfers increased in 2020 and remained at or above that elevated level going forward (Wheat and Eckerd, 2024). With households transferring more money out of checking and savings accounts and into investments, CDs, and money market accounts, the declines in bank balances documented above may create an overly pessimistic picture of recent trends. Total cash reserves may be on an increasing trajectory even while checking and savings account balances continue to decrease.

While we cannot directly observe total cash reserves, we approximate balances across a household’s full set of liquid accounts by tallying observed transfers out of checking and savings accounts. We account for potential returns to those additional accounts via two scenarios: a conservative low-return scenario where all higher-yield accounts earn the same as the 10-year Treasury yield in the given month, and a moderate-return scenario where balances in investment accounts accrue gains that match S&P 500 returns and other accounts (such as savings accounts, money-market accounts, and CDs) again earn returns equal to the 10-year Treasury yield.⁷

Figure 2 shows year-over-year change in median monthly balance for bank balances and total cash reserves. By May 2025, bank balances had stopped declining year-over-year, but had not yet returned to the positive growth that we would expect based on historical trends. Total cash reserves, on the other hand, had returned to positive growth by May 2025. As noted above, households tend to steadily increase cash savings in their bank accounts over time, with monthly median balances typically elevated around 7 percent over the prior year. Trends for both bank balances and total cash reserves have been outside of that norm in recent years. Year-over-year balance growth was very high during 2020 and early 2021 due to pandemic-era government supports, but turned negative in 2022 as households spent down their elevated cash balances. From 2022 through 2023, year-over-year balance changes were negative but on an upward trajectory, as decreases slowed. 

By the end of 2024, bank balances had reached parity with the prior year, and growth remained roughly zero or slightly negative through May 2025. However, we begin to see positive growth when we look at total cash reserves. Under the moderate-return scenario, growth became positive in April 2024 and reached a rate of 5 percent in early 2025, with growth around 3 percent in May. The low-return scenario has slightly lower growth of 1.4 percent in May 2025. Given these results, declining trends in checking and savings account balances may be due to households moving cash out of checking and savings accounts in favor of other types of accounts. Our approximation of total household cash reserves suggests that households may have returned to positive cash balance growth much earlier than checking and savings balances alone would suggest.

Low-income households are leading the rebound, with recent growth in both bank balances and total cash reserves

Are these balance trends universal, or do some types of households differ in balance trajectories? While balance levels differ by income, we also observe different trends in balance growth by income⁸: low-income households returned to positive year-over-year growth last year, while checking and savings account balances are still declining slightly for high-income households. Figure 3 shows year-over-year balance growth by income quartile (see the Appendix for balance levels and relative balance growth by income quartile). Across income quartiles, balance growth is very high during 2020 and early 2021, turning negative by 2022 as households depleted their elevated cash reserves. From 2022 through 2024, balance changes were negative but on a steep upward trajectory for low-income households, with high-income households following a much flatter trajectory during that period. Since September 2024, households in the lowest income quartile have had annual bank balance growth of 1 to 3 percent, dipping back to zero growth in May 2025. In contrast, high-income households’ bank balances continue to decline, though at a slowing rate: only 3 percent negative in May 2025.

Figure 4 shows that total cash reserve growth has been positive for most income groups for at least the last year, following a different pattern than bank account balance growth. Under both return scenarios, households in all income groups have returned to positive year-over-year growth of total cash reserves. Households in the lowest income quartile have had positive cash reserve growth since March 2024, with 5 percent growth in 2025 under the low-return scenario and 6 percent growth under the moderate-return scenario. Total cash reserve growth remained negative longer for households in the highest income quartile, particularly for the low-return scenario where growth remained negative through January 2025, becoming positive in February with 1 to 2 percent growth through May 2025. Under the moderate-return scenario, total cash reserve growth for high-income households has been positive since March 2024, with 4 percent growth in 2025. Overall, total cash reserves are on the rise once we account for cash held outside of the household’s checking and savings accounts, indicating that continued draw-down of checking and savings account balances may be due to households reallocating cash into other types of accounts.

Appendix