American households are leaning on their investment portfolios to fund daily spending at twice the rate they did before the pandemic, according to new research by the JPMorganChase Institute.
The report, drawing on de-identified checking account data from more than 20 million Chase customers tracked from 2015 to 2026, found that transfers from investment accounts into checking accounts rose from the equivalent of 3.5% of total consumer spending in April 2019 to 6.8% in April 2026. In 2015, that figure stood at just 2.3%.
"The share of people making net withdrawals from their investment accounts has doubled since 2019," the report's authors (Chris Wheat, president of the JPMorganChase Institute; George Eckerd, wealth and markets research director; and research vice president Melissa O'Brien) wrote in the September 2026 report.
The research team also found that stock market holdings now account for nearly one-third of total US household assets as of the first quarter of 2026, roughly double their share at the start of the 2010s, citing Federal Reserve Financial Accounts data.
Among people aged 65 and older in the top income segment, the share making net investment withdrawals rose 13 percentage points to 37% between 2019 and 2025, according to the report. For that same cohort, investment inflows now represent 15% of annual spending, up 7 percentage points from 2019.
The pattern is consistent with the ongoing shift away from defined-benefit pension plans toward defined-contribution accounts. Access to defined-benefit plans among private sector employees fell from 30.1% in 1984 to 11.1% in 2023, while access to defined-contribution plans rose from 12.0% to 47.7% over the same period, according to the Congressional Research Service. That shift places a growing share of retirement income decisions, and market risk, directly in the hands of individuals and their advisors.
High-income individuals across all age groups showed the sharpest increases. Among top earners, the share of spending funded by investment withdrawals exceeded 10% every month of 2026, up from an average below 4% in 2015, according to the JPMorganChase Institute data.
The picture is not limited to retirees. Among top earners aged 25 to 44, nearly one in four individuals made net withdrawals from investment accounts in 2025, with those flows accounting for approximately 7% of that group's spending. Even among lower-income adults aged 25 to 44, the share tapping investments doubled, though from a low base, rising to 7%.
Parallel to the growth in withdrawals, the report found a simultaneous rise in the share of younger people actively adding money to investment accounts. Among those aged 25 to 44, the share making net deposits into investment accounts nearly doubled from 8.5% in 2019 to 16.6% in 2025.
The findings point to a broadening of investment account activity across age groups, with younger cohorts accumulating and older ones spending down - the classic life-cycle pattern, now playing out at greater scale and speed.
Financial advisors navigating this landscape are increasingly focused on what the industry calls decumulation — translating accumulated portfolio assets into sustainable retirement income. As InvestmentNews has reported, decumulation strategies are undergoing their most significant rethink in years, driven by longer lifespans, higher interest rates, and the growing cohort of Gen X clients entering retirement.
The JPMorganChase Institute's data also surfaced a direct correlation between stock market performance and withdrawal behavior.
The upward trend in investment drawdowns was interrupted three times - during the COVID-19 selloff of February–March 2020, the sustained equity decline of January–October 2022, and the market downturn of January–April 2025. Each dip in equity prices corresponded with a pullback in the share of households moving money from portfolios to checking accounts.
That sensitivity has broader economic consequences. The aggregate personal savings rate in the US fell to 3.0% as of May 2026, near multi-decade lows, according to the Federal Reserve's FRED database, down from an average above 7% in 2019. The JPMorganChase Institute researchers describe the decline as consistent with households sustaining spending by pulling from investment assets rather than earned income alone.
The report's authors suggest the link between financial markets and the real economy may now be stronger than at any prior point, meaning market volatility could transmit more directly to consumer spending than policymakers and advisors have historically assumed.
"A larger share of spending and retirement security is a function of market performance and financial discipline," the authors concluded.
Sequence-of-returns risk - the danger that early market losses permanently impair a portfolio's ability to fund withdrawals - becomes more acute as a growing share of clients rely on investment accounts as a primary spending source. Practice management resources for advisors on retirement income planning have grown steadily in response, as firms adapt to serving an aging client base with increasingly complex decumulation needs.
The administration's current policy agenda may amplify the trend. The JPMorganChase Institute noted that proposed expansions of tax-advantaged investment programs including Trump Accounts and Trump IRAs, are joining a pattern that already has significant momentum in household financial behavior.
The full report is available at the JPMorganChase Institute's research page on household financial health.
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