SwitchWize Research Desk
How much cash should you actually keep?
Most advice gives everyone the same answer: 3 to 6 months of expenses. Real advisors don't — a dual-income household with steady jobs and a self-employed single parent need genuinely different reserves. This page gives you a personalized range instead of one flat rule, shows how your cash on hand compares to households like yours, and is being built with input from real financial advisors, not just editorial assumption.
Get your personalized range in under a minute
Answer a few questions about your income structure, dependents, risk appetite, and life stage. See a range in months and dollars — with the reasoning behind every adjustment shown, not hidden.
How does your cash on hand compare?
The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances tracks median balances across checking, savings, and money-market accounts by age. Treat these as broad orientation, not a target — they show what households typically hold, not what they should hold.
| Age of household head | Median checking + savings + MMA balance |
|---|---|
| Under 35 | $5,400 |
| 35-44 | $7,500 |
| 45-54 | $8,700 |
| 55-64 | $8,000 |
| 65-74 | $13,400 |
| 75+ | $10,000 |
| All families | $8,000 |
Source: Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022 (most recent wave), reported in 2022 dollars. Figures are medians, not percentile ranks.
What do you actually tell clients?
This framework is being validated against real advisor practice, not just published guidance. If you're a financial advisor, your answer helps make it more accurate — and you can be named and linked in the published report if you'd like.
Share your readMethodology
The Cash Reserve Advisor's base ranges are seeded from published guidance (the widely cited 3-6 month standard for stable income, extended for variable/self-employed income, per common advisor practice), with disclosed editorial adjustments for dependents, risk appetite, and life stage — see the calculator's own methodology note for the exact formula. The peer comparison above uses the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances 2022, the most authoritative public source for household balance data, as a median comparison rather than a percentile ranking pending a more detailed distribution source. Once the financial advisor survey has enough responses, the base ranges will be upgraded from published guidance to real advisor consensus, clearly labeled as such.
Frequently asked questions
Why not just say "3 to 6 months" like everyone else?
Because that range is a starting point that advisors adjust based on real factors — income stability, number of earners in a household, dependents, and risk tolerance. Treating it as one universal number ignores those factors. This page shows a personalized range with the specific reasoning behind it, not a single generic figure.
Is the peer comparison a percentile ranking?
No — it's a median comparison. The Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances publishes median transaction-account balances (checking, savings, money market) by age band, and that's what's shown here. A full percentile ranking would need a more detailed distribution than what's publicly available for this specific figure, so this page doesn't claim more precision than the data supports.
What is the financial advisor survey?
SwitchWize is surveying real financial advisors on what they actually tell clients about cash reserves, to ground this framework in real practice rather than editorial assumption alone. Results will be published as a cited report once enough responses are in. If you're an advisor, you can contribute your own answer.