Deposit a Check Today. $275 of It Is Yours Tomorrow.

Deposit a check at the branch this afternoon. How much of it can you spend tomorrow?

$275. Not $225.

The federal floor moved on July 1, 2025, and $275 is the number your bank has to hit on a check you hand a teller. If yours is still releasing $225 and making you wait on the rest, it’s working off a figure that expired more than a year ago.

Five numbers moved, quietly

Regulation CC is the rule that decides how long a bank can sit on your deposit. The Federal Reserve and the CFPB adjusted its dollar amounts for inflation in a final rule published May 20, 2024, effective July 1, 2025. The law makes them do this every five years. Five figures changed:

• Minimum available the next business day on a check deposit: $225 to $275.
• Cash you can pull on the day funds clear the standard schedule, on top of that $275: $450 to $550.
• New-account threshold: $5,525 to $6,725.
• Large-deposit threshold: $5,525 to $6,725.
• Repeated-overdraft trigger: $5,525 to $6,725.

Here’s what tells you how closely anyone is watching. The CFPB’s own consumer page on deposit holds, last reviewed August 28, 2026, still says “Checks for $225 or less deposited in-person” and still walks you through a $5,525 example. That’s fourteen months after its own rule changed the numbers. If the agency that co-wrote the rule hasn’t updated its explainer, don’t assume the teller has either.

The number that’s worth real money

The large-deposit threshold.

Deposit a $6,500 check. Under the old $5,525 line, the $975 sitting above that line fell outside the normal availability schedule, and the bank could tack up to five more business days onto it. Under $6,725, none of that check trips the exception at all. Same check, same bank, a week of difference, decided by a number almost nobody knows exists.

Opening a brand new account changes the math too. For the first 30 days, the fast schedule covers only the first $6,725 of the deposits that qualify for it. Anything above that can sit until the ninth business day.

Available is not cleared

Now the catch, and it’s the one that costs people the most.

Regulation CC forces the bank to let you spend the money. It does not say the check is good. Those are two different things, and nobody at the bank is going to volunteer the difference. If the check turns out to be forged, or the account behind it is empty, the credit gets reversed weeks later and the hole is yours to fill.

That gap is the entire fake check scam. Someone overpays you, asks you to send the difference back, and the federal availability schedule does the rest of the work for them.

Do this

Pull up your bank’s funds availability disclosure. It’s in your account agreement, and federal law requires the bank to hand it to you. Check that the next-business-day figure reads $275.

If a hold ran longer than the schedule allows, call and say “Regulation CC” out loud. Ask which exception they used. They need one, and they were required to tell you about it in writing when they placed the hold.

Never spend a check from someone you don’t know, whatever your balance says. Available money and good money are not the same money.

And if the deposit is real and it’s going to sit for a while, don’t leave it in checking. Compare what savings accounts are actually paying and move it.

The next inflation adjustment lands July 1, 2030. File that away.

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