I don't have data to add, but this topic comes up a lot at work. The average salary is >100k,
I don't see $100K average salary anywhere, the average household income I see for 2016 was $57,600 for 2016.
That $57,600 includes lots of two income households. So, there are many $25k plus $30k two earner families.
I do see the very low amount of savings for most families, and find it very sad. We bought our first home about
3 years after being married, and got as low as $3,000 of savings. After that we always had savings and never had
any concern about paying any bills or living paycheck to paycheck. Looking back we never had any (lack of) money stress.
I can only imagine what it would be like to have to worry about getting bills paid. But we also always lived well under our income,
the first year we were married we earned $18,000 and saved $5,400 + the $600 we had in wedding gifts.
My wife and I together have averaged about $47,000 of income a year over the last 36 years.
We are the odd ones because, if I could get my wife to retire, we could easily live on the gains
from our retirement accounts. But it took us 30 years to save $1M in investment assets.
We could not have done it in 15 or 20 years.
We are blessed, but we also get a large chunk of credit for the blessing we have, it didn't just happen!