While most Americans strive to fatten up their savings accounts, it can be difficult to discern how much of your cash belongs in a checking account.
The dilemma: You want to have enough on hand to pay your bills, but not so much that you’re sacrificing higher-yielding options.
The expert rule-of-thumb answer is…it depends.
“You should aim to have a month of living expenses act like a floor for your checking account,” said Kaylin Dillon, a certified financial planner.
To get a sense of where you stand compared to other Americans – the average checking account balance is just under $9,000, for instance – USA Today Blueprint broke down figures from an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the University of California at Berkeley.
Note: All averages are mean figures.
Average checking account balance by age
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The average checking account balance among Americans tends…
