Over 20% don’t even have a savings account! Not surprising. When the median annual household (household, not individual; and median, not average, meaning half of households make less, half make more) is only $51K, millions of people don’t have a lot left over to save. I honestly don’t know how many people live on what they make. I assume many of them go into debt. Which probably serves the purposes of the finance industry just fine. It sounds like they specifically asked about ‘savings accounts’, if they included checking accounts I’m assuming the figures would be higher. With the interest on savings accounts being so low I know a lot of people who don’t bother and just keep everything in the checking. Sure, you’re giving up the $10/year in earned interest, big whoop. I didn’t have a savings account myself until my bank contacted me to change my account type to a different one with more benefits and automatically set up a savings account to go with it. It also doesn’t ask about non-liquid savings, so investment accounts probably aren’t considered, and aside from your normal floating checking cushion and some emergency savings, it’s probably smarter to have the money invested in some way anyway. I keep meaning to set up an IRA or a Vanguard fund, I just haven’t gotten around to it. It’s not surprising. You can’t really put anything away if you’re not making enough to do so. My credit union pays a much higher interest on my money if it’s in my checking account, so that’s where it is. I just keep the minimum in my savings. I wouldn’t even have it if it wasn’t required for membership. I have $5 in my savings account because that’s the minimum I have to keep in it. Everything else is in checking or other investments. If you’re going to have money in an account that you’re not going to use, there are far better places to put it than a savings account. The wages and wealth for the vast majority of Americans have been plundered for almost half a century now. People are NOT being paid what they should be. A very small subset of already very wealthy and politically powerful people have been appropriating more income to themselves during this time. They’re also not hiring, or hiring part-time for what were once full-time jobs. They’ve also let wages stagnate on what were once jobs you could live and raise a family on. Or at least, in my husband’s case, support yourself and your wife – which he cannot because the last raise he was offered was $0.25/hour. Ohhhh. Try not to spend that in once place. And I can’t find a job – not even getting responses, probably because half the time they’re not hiring and half the time, I am overqualified. I told a recruiter, “look, just put me in for junior copywriter jobs, I don’t care” and she said “they’ll take one look at your resume and tell me they want someone without experience, just out of college, not someone with experience” Great. Trying to re-start your life at 40 sucks and it’s not easy out there. $1,000 in any account would be a freaking luxury right about now. And I find my hatred for the rich grows a little more every day. Do you really think poor people spend money on fast food (other than the dollar menu), in-game purchases, $5 coffees, and church tithes? Sure, they may have iPhones, but they don’t cost any more than lesser phones with the plan. I have an iPhone (a 5… but an iPhone – and pay nothing for it, it came when my husband and I went on a family plan to save money). And really, potato chips? You can buy a big bag for $2.00. It falls firmly under “something I can afford to eat when money is tight.” That’s out of touch beyond words. People struggling scoff at things like eating out or in-game purchases or expensive coffee. You learn to like water, and get creative with the pasta sauce (I’ve found white beans make it hearty and better and are MUCH cheaper than meatballs), skip meals, give up things like orange juice and eggs, don’t buy new clothes, return bottles and cans rather than throwing them in the recycling bin, shop at Goodwill if they need job interview clothes and hope they have something decent in their size… so on and so forth.