How Banks Can Fix the Real Reason Americans Aren't Saving

Americans are saving less money than they have in years, because banks have made saving much harder than spending.

As an industry, we spent decades making spending easier, faster, and more automatic, while leaving saving dependent on sheer willpower. And then we act surprised when people don't save.

The personal savings rate recently fell to just 2.6%. ⚠️ Nearly 1 in 4 Americans have no emergency savings, ⚠️ and fewer than half could cover a $1,000 emergency without borrowing money or finding somewhere else for help. ⚠️

Those numbers are often explained away as an inflation problem or a consumer problem. I want to walk through why that happened and what the banks that actually changed behavior have understood.

This isn't about whether banks offer savings accounts. Every bank offers savings accounts. That's what made my experience with Acorns so interesting.

Back in 2018, I opened an Acorns account simply to see whether small, automated contributions could really make a difference. I connected several of my accounts, set up modest monthly transfers, turned down roundups, and then mostly forgot about it. A few years later, I checked the balance and was really surprised. It was the largest savings account I had ever accumulated in my life.

What surprised me wasn't the amount — it was really how little effort it took. The system was doing all the work for me, letting the savings habit and investment performance work together with compounding to bring a great result.

Then another realization hit me. Not one of my primary banking relationships had ever suggested anything like this. Not once. And considering how often our industry talks about financial wellness, that really struck me as odd.

My experience with Acorns reminded me of something really simple. Most people already know they should save. Most understand the value of an emergency fund and the importance of preparing for the future. The hard part, like a diet, is sticking with it long enough to see results. I really understood savings. What changed was having a system that made saving easier.

So I don't think this is mainly a financial education problem. It's actually a behavioral problem.

As I thought about this video, I kept coming back to Christmas clubs. Now some of the younger people watching may not remember these, but they were among the most successful savings programs banks ever created. Customers made regular deposits throughout the year, often bringing in cash and savings coupons into a branch, and they watched their balances grow. When the coupon book was completed, many institutions added a small bonus on top of what was saved.

Looking back, the success wasn't really about the account. It was about building a habit and reinforcing it with visible progress and a reward. Many of our mothers did the same thing at home — they kept separate envelopes for different goals and filled them a little bit at a time, all year long. Saving worked because there was a system.

What stands out is how many modern success stories around saving followed that same logic. Bank of America's Keep the Change rounded up purchases and moved the difference into a savings plan. Ally lets customers create up to 30 separate savings goals within one account, each with its own target — it's actually a digital version of that envelope program. SoFi connects savings, investing, and planning into one experience, so money moves naturally from sitting still to going to work. Like my Acorns example, small automatic actions repeated over time can build a balance that most people will never expect. The behaviors didn't change. The technology has just made it easier to do this.

Here's what my own banks missed. Earlier, I said not one of my primary banks ever offered me anything like Acorns. This is the part that really bothered me the most. I bank with two of the largest financial institutions in the entire country, and every month for years, they could see my money leaving my accounts many times a month to be saved somewhere else. That was not a hidden signal. It was an obvious one.

A recurring outbound transfer is a customer telling you exactly what they're trying to do. Neither bank ever used it to start a conversation. No email. No note. No nudge. No call. No "Hey, we've noticed you're saving somewhere else — can we help?" They had everything they needed to reach me and said nothing.

As I mentioned in a recent Insight Video, this is how silent attrition happens. People's accounts stay open, but the relationship leaves dollar by dollar.

There's one idea I keep coming back to, and it has nothing to do with new technology. Think about how a normal account works. Spending is automatic — it happens the second you tap your card. Savings are the thing you have to remember, set up, and then protect from yourself. We've made spending the default, and saving the option.

We already know how powerful it is to flip that. When retirement plans switched from opt-in to opt-out, participation didn't inch up. It jumped from roughly two-thirds of eligible employees to now more than 9 in 10. ⚠️

So here's the challenge I put to everyone watching this video today. What would happen if saving were the thing that happened automatically and spending was the thing you had to stop and think about? You don't need a new platform to find out. You need the willingness to make saving the easy choice.

So here's where I land. Banks aren't bad at changing behavior. In fact, we're extraordinary at it. We get someone to tap their card a few more times a week. We get them to finance a purchase they hadn't planned on. We can make money move in a fraction of a second on a Sunday night at midnight from a phone. We may be the most effective behavioral change machine in the entire economy. We just never aimed it at saving.

And I don't think that's by accident. A customer who saves more spends a little less, and probably borrows a little less. For most of this industry, the math has quietly pointed the wrong way. Saving became the quiet account in the back of a relationship — not the first one on your screen, the one you have to go find, the one nobody nudges you toward.

We know how to make saving easy. We've proven it over and over again. The real question is whether we want to.