Grand Canyon Times

Lockdowns and stimulus checks issued during the COVID-19 pandemic have allowed some households in the United States to build up their savings accounts, but with soaring gas prices and the high cost of inflation, Americans in Arizona and across the country have had to tap into that money to stay afloat.

A Moody Analytics report found that U.S. households built up $2.7 trillion in savings from the start of the pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). That extra money has been attributed to lockdowns, which kept people home with fewer options to spend their money and boosted incomes with three rounds of pandemic relief stimulus checks.

"The personal saving rate, a measure of how much money people have left over after spending and taxes, reached 5.4% in May," the WSJ reported.

That is lower than the 10-year average and far below the record of 34% in April 2020, which was about a month into the pandemic, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Americans have had to turn to their savings more often to cover everyday expenses including fuel due to inflation, according to the WSJ.  

Last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for the prior year ending in May 2022 which showed an 8.6% rise in costs for all items, a 40-year high.

Jamie Dimon , JPMorgan CEO, told the Journal in June that U.S. consumers had about six to nine months of spending power left in their bank accounts.

A June report by Ipsos found only 37% of Americans approved of President Joe Biden's handling of the economic recovery. The rating was about the same as those from the past few months.

The same report found about a quarter of Americans approved of how the president is handling inflation and gas prices.

Western states saw a 0.8% increase in prices in May and the CPI for all urban consumers rose 8.3% in the region, according to the BLS.