This is a misinterpretation of what the survey data says. It's a widespread one, and worth correcting. A large fraction of people have debt, such as student lo

This is a misinterpretation of what the survey data says. It's a widespread one, and worth correcting. A large fraction of people have debt, such as student loans, mortgages, car loans, etc. If they have a significant amount of extra cash, they'll use it to reduce their debt, because money sitting in a bank account makes less interest than the interest on a mortgage or any other sort of loan. So if you look at these peoples' bank accounts, they don't have any savings. Scary, right? But most of them do have lines of credit, so if they have a financial setback, they won't lose the ability to buy groceries, they'll just take on additional debt.