Visualizing the Financial Fears of Americans, Particularly During Tax Season

With the national savings rate hovering just below 1% and tax season in full swing, this seems like the most unfortunately opportune time to recognize how minuscule the balance of the average American family's checking account is at any one time. A recent Reddit thread surfaced in the /r/TodayILearned forum titled: 'TIL that the average American family has $3800 in the bank.'

The power of that average was quickly assessed (as can be seen by the subsequent outpour of comments to the thread), many of which delving into discussions on poor saving habits, skewed results due to an increasingly wealthy 1%, and a darkly humorous amount of Redditors giving insight into the few hundreds of dollars they have in their account and claiming that their next few weeks worth of food will be coming from that stockpile.

The American Tax & Financial Center segment at TurboTax has created a visual to better understand some of the common financial fears of Americans, along with how tax payers plan to save or spend their refunds. Here's a look: