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April 30, 2026 • 9 minutes
The median U.S. household has $39,000 in total financial assets, including retirement accounts, investment accounts, and liquid savings, but excluding home equity. That’s from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, the most comprehensive look at American household finances, covering the latest available data through 2022.
How does your household compare? Below you’ll find balances across cash accounts, emergency funds, and home equity, broken out by age and income level where the data allows.
Key figures at a glance:
A note on average vs. median: Averages are usually higher than medians because a small number of very wealthy households pull the number up. The median is simply the midpoint in a set of numbers. Example: The average of 1, 5, and 10 is 5.33. The median is 5.
Use the Boldin Planner to see your own totals and projections. Try different scenarios to see how adjustments affect your long-term picture.
Cash accounts are for shorter-term living expenses, repairs, and emergencies, and for most U.S. households, the balance is modest. The median household holds $8,000 across all transaction accounts, according to the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, while the mean balance is $62,410. The disparity between those numbers shows how a small number of households with very high balances pulls the average up, making the median a far more accurate representation of what a typical American actually has on hand.
These transaction accounts include checking accounts, savings accounts, money market deposit accounts (MMDAs), money market mutual funds (MMMFs), call accounts, and prepaid cards. Despite being the most widely held financial asset category (owned by nearly all U.S. families), these balances are relatively thin for most households.
Certificates of deposit (CDs) aren’t included in the $8,000 figure because the Federal Reserve tracks them separately. Just 6.5% of Americans hold a certificate of deposit, the data shows, making CDs one of the least-held financial assets tracked by the survey. CD ownership was more common in decades when interest rates were higher and savings options were fewer.
The Federal Reserve’s 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances is currently in the field and hasn’t published results yet, so the median transaction account balances by age below reflect the most recent available data from 2022.
Source: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances (2022)
The FDIC’s most recent survey reported that 96% of U.S. households had at least one bank account, which is the highest share since tracking began in 2009. The Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances puts the average checking balance at $16,891 and the median at $2,800. Americans aged 55 to 64 have the highest median checking balance of any age group, at $3,500.
Source: Federal Reserve Board, Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022.
The Boldin Planner lets you enter your cash and checking balances alongside your full financial picture, so you can see how your liquid savings fit relative to your other assets and what adjustments would move the needle.
The Federal Reserve’s reported $8,000 median in transaction accounts underscores a broader savings vulnerability. Only 46% of U.S. adults have enough saved to cover three months of expenses in an emergency, according to Bankrate’s 2026 Annual Emergency Savings Report, which is far short of the three-to-six-month cushion most financial planners recommend.
An emergency fund covers the things you can’t plan for: a job loss, a medical bill, a busted water heater. It also keeps people from tapping their retirement accounts when circumstances become challenging.
2025 research from Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies puts the middle-class median at $10,000 in emergency savings, though that figure climbs significantly with age. More than one in ten middle-class households (12%) have no emergency savings at all.
Source: Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, 2025
The broader picture is rougher. The Bankrate report found that 58% of U.S. adults have less or the same in emergency savings compared to a year ago. A February 2026 LendingTree / QuestionPro survey found that 14% of Americans have no cash savings at all, and nearly 4 in 10 have less than $500.
Explore why an emergency fund is the foundation of financial wellness. If you’re not sure how your emergency fund stacks up against your broader cash flow needs, the Boldin Planner can help you model it in context, alongside your income, expenses, and retirement timeline.
According to the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies’ most recent research, people in the middle class are prioritizing health savings as a key part of their financial preparedness. Transamerica’s previous report from 2024 found that almost three in four middle-class households (74%) were putting money aside for healthcare, most through a regular savings, checking, or brokerage account (59%), with 23% using a health savings account (HSA) and 14% using a flexible spending account (FSA).
HSA balances have been climbing. The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) puts average end-of-year balances at $4,747 in 2023, up from $4,607 the year before. Lively, an HSA provider, reported that its average client balance reached $5,457 in 2025, which is an 11% year-over-year gain. That figure reflects one provider’s customer base, so it may skew toward more engaged savers. Much of the overall growth reflects how relatively new many accounts still are: roughly a third of those in EBRI’s database were opened since 2021.
The 2025 Transamerica survey confirms that healthcare costs are still a top financial concern, with long-term care in later years cited as the single greatest retirement fear among the middle class (41%). Long-term care costs are one of the harder variables to plan for, because the range of outcomes is wide. The Boldin Planner lets you model different healthcare cost scenarios so you can see how they affect your retirement picture before they become urgent.
Home equity tends to grow with age, and for many households it’s the single largest component of net worth.
According to Cotality, the average mortgaged homeowner held $295,000 in equity as of Q4 2025, with total equity for borrowers with a mortgage at $17 trillion. Some 66% of Americans own their home, and for those who do, that equity is a substantial asset.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), “Wealth of Households: 2023,” Table 1. Median Value of Assets by Type and Selected Characteristics. Survey Year 2024, released July 24, 2025.
Home equity can be an important piece of a retirement plan, and can be put to work in several ways, most commonly through downsizing. Model what that looks like in the Boldin Planner to see how it affects cash flow and long-term net worth.
This article covers cash accounts, emergency savings, and home equity. For a full breakdown of retirement account balances by age (401(k)s, IRAs, and total household retirement savings), see Average Retirement Savings by Age.
The averages in this article tell you where most people stand. What they can’t tell you is if you’re on track with your finances, because that depends on when you want to retire, what you plan to spend, what you’ll owe in taxes, and how your accounts are structured.
The Boldin Planner lets you put in your own numbers and see exactly what they mean for your retirement outlook. Model your cash accounts, home equity, retirement balances, and Social Security estimates together, and visualize how they work together across your retirement timeline. Run a scenario where you retire two years earlier. Test what a Roth conversion would do to your tax picture in your 60s.
What counts most is how your savings support your goals. Wherever your numbers sit today, there’s a next step worth taking.
The median U.S. household holds $39,000 in total financial assets, according to the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances. That figure includes retirement accounts, investment accounts, and liquid savings, but excludes home equity. The mean is considerably higher, pulled up by a small number of high-asset households.
The Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances puts the median transaction account balance (covering checking, savings, money market accounts, and prepaid cards) at $8,000. The median checking balance alone is $2,800. Averages are much higher ($62,410 and $16,891, respectively) because a small number of high-balance households skew the mean.
Transaction account balances tend to grow with age. Americans under 35 have a median of $5,400 across transaction accounts, while those aged 65 to 74 have the highest median at $13,400. For checking accounts specifically, the 55-to-64 age group holds the highest median balance at $3,500.
Among middle-class households, the median emergency savings balance is $10,000, according to Transamerica’s 2025 research. That figure climbs sharply with age, from $2,000 for people in their 20s to $35,000 for those 70 and older. Still, more than one in ten middle-class households has no emergency savings at all, and only 46% of U.S. adults have enough saved to cover three months of expenses.
The average mortgaged homeowner held $295,000 in home equity as of Q4 2025, according to Cotality. Median home equity by age ranges from $100,000 for households under 35 to $250,000 for those 65 and older, based on Census Bureau data.
Most financial planners recommend keeping three to six months of living expenses in accessible accounts as an emergency fund. Beyond that, the right savings target depends on your timeline, retirement goals, expected expenses, and how your accounts are structured, which is why modeling your specific numbers matters more than benchmarking against averages.
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See figures by trust, education, and wealth tier, from $6,100 for the least wealthy to $2.7 million for the top 1%, plus what it means for your plan.
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