Checking account running low? Prices running high? Time to sell some stocks.
Wealthy Americans increasingly tap investment accounts for cash, leveraging the massive stock market gains of recent years to cover the rising costs of everyday life.
The share of Americans moving money from investment accounts to checking accounts has nearly quadrupled since 2015, from 2.4% to 8.2%, according to a new report from JPMorganChase Institute. The analysis looked at account activity between February and April in each year.
High-income Americans, in particular, tap investment gains to support their spending. Among the top 10% of earners, the report found, the share pulling money from investment accounts into checking accounts rose from 6.6% in 2015 to 20.3%
in 2026.
Wealthy people and those over 65 “are leading the rise,” the report says, “but withdrawals have increased across all age and income groups.”
The analysis covers checking-account data for more than 20 million Chase customers since 2015.
The report supplies hard data to support persistent talk of an emerging K-shaped economy, with high-income Americans pulling ahead as low-income households lag behind.
Middle-income and lower-income Americans tend to rely on income from work, rather than stocks, for their spending. And “real” hourly earnings, after inflation, declined by 0.3% between August 2025 and August 2026.
“Real income growth has been kind of low for a while,” said George Eckerd, wealth and markets research director at JPMorganChase Institute. The institute is an inhouse think tank for the banking giant.
Here's how wealthy Americans keep spending in a shaky economy
Consumer sentiment has been running low. Americans aren’t saving much. Household debt stands near an all-time high.
Yet wealthy Americans continue to spend. In fact, the top 10% of earners now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.
America’s economic growth increasingly relies on well-paid workers. The top 10% of earners accounted for 45.5% of spending in the first quarter of 2026, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's. The top 20% of earners accounted for roughly 60% of personal outlays. Those figures sit near record highs.
"The well-to-do are doing very well and thus spending with gusto and providing the key tailwind to economic growth," Zandi said.
Older Americans tend to be wealthier and are also big spenders. People 55 and older did 46% of the spending in the first quarter of 2026, Moody’s reports.
The stock market has driven an unprecedented rise in American wealth, especially for people who were already wealthy. The S&P 500 index has more than tripled in value since its low ebb in the COVID-19 downturn of 2020.
Total household net worth rose $13 trillion to $196 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, according to the Federal Reserve. Corporate equity holdings – stocks – rose $10.7 trillion to $74 trillion from the first quarter to the second.
The top 10% of American earners now control 69% of the wealth.
Stock wealth increasingly drives spending, especially for the wealthy
Stock wealth increasingly drives consumer spending, especially for wealthier Americans, according to the JPMorganChase report. Lower-income consumers are selling stocks to fund their spending as well, but on a much smaller scale.
Older and wealthier Americans are more likely than younger and less affluent people to have stock wealth. The typical stockholder in the top 10% by income owned $1.1 million in stock in the third quarter of 2025, up from $624,000 at the end of 2022, according to the Surveys of Consumers from the University of Michigan.
The JPMorganChase study found that the oldest and wealthiest Americans were the most likely to tap investment wealth for their spending.
The share of top earners over 65 who drew money from their investments rose from 24% in 2019 to 37% in 2026.
“People who are sitting on decades of gains and are later in life and maybe not working any more, they are the ones who are showing up the strongest in this,” Eckerd said.
Rising stock prices have insulated top earners from a cash crunch that has hobbled the less affluent.
Consumer prices have risen by about 30% since 2020, federal data shows. Many wealthy Americans can easily cover that spread with their stock earnings, high income and comparatively ample savings.
But if wealthy Americans stop spending, economists say, the economy could falter.
“Markets are volatile,” Eckerd said.
A brief stock swoon in 2022 prompted top earners to slow withdrawals from investment accounts. A longer downturn could more seriously hamper their spending.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Here's how high-income Americans keep spending in a shaky economy
