Shameless plug, but this is why my company, Survata, reviews every single survey that goes out through us, to catch biases written into questions. They can seri

Shameless plug, but this is why my company, Survata, reviews every single survey that goes out through us, to catch biases written into questions. They can seriously skew results. That said, even though I imagine there was some level of confusion about savings v. checking, my guess is that the overall conclusion wouldn't change substantially if you guaranteed the respondents all understood the question identically. The news that Americans don't have nearly enough savings isn't exactly new, and as others have pointed out, there are plenty of situations where living paycheck to paycheck is the only realistic option.