Score your money health — and check every number behind it
Fourteen questions, about four minutes. The result is a 0–100 score across four pillars, a dashboard that shows its work, and a ranked list of what would move the number — every weight and threshold published below, every answer staying in your browser. It is a self-assessment, not a credit score: no bureau data, no lender, nothing sent anywhere.
About you
Answers stay in this browser — they are saved on your device, never sent anywhere, and the button above erases them completely. Any money question can be left blank: blank means “prefer not to say,” and that part of the check shows as not assessed rather than guessed.
Sets the peer group for the comparison panel and how many compounding years the future pillar has to work with.
Labels the peer comparisons honestly — the survey data behind them is per household.
Context for how far a buffer has to stretch — it does not change any threshold.
Sets the buffer target: 3 months of essentials on steady-style pay, 6 when income varies — the CFPB guidance range. The mapping is published on this page.
How this is scored
The framework is CFPB’s four elements of financial well-being (2015): control over day-to-day finances, capacity to absorb a shock, being on track for goals, and freedom of choice under debt. The four pillars map onto those elements one-to-one and carry equal 25% weights — CFPB treats the elements as co-equal, and unequal weights would be a claim we have no source for. The overall score is the average of the pillars that could be assessed, rounded to a whole number. A pillar missing an answer is not assessed: nothing is ever imputed, the average renormalizes over what remains, and the header says how many areas the score is based on.
Cash flow — savings rate
Savings rate is take-home minus total spending, over take-home. Points run from 0 at −20% (spending a fifth beyond income), through 15 at break-even, 40 at 5%, 65 at 10%, 90 at 20%, to 100 at 40%, interpolated linearly between those anchors. The 20% anchor is the savings slice of the 50/30/20 rule of thumb (Warren & Tyagi, All Your Worth, 2005) — a convention, and labeled as one.
Buffer — months of essentials
Liquid savings divided by essential monthly spending. The target is 3 months on steady income and 6 when income is variable or interrupted — the CFPB emergency-savings guidance range — and 6 for a sole earner supporting dependents even on steady pay, because one income carrying several people has no second paycheck to fall back on (a planner convention, labeled as one; it applies only when both answers were given). The survey’s richer income wordings map down to the same rule: a steady base with bonuses budgets like a salary, seasonal work counts as variable, and a fixed retirement income counts as steady. The curve is deliberately steepest in the first month (0 months → 0 points, 1 month → 40, target → 90, twice the target → 100): CFPB’s research on small buffers finds the first month of cushion prevents the most new debt.
Debt load — back-end DTI, with two caps
All monthly debt payments plus housing, over gross monthly income. At or under 36% — the underwriting convention’s back-end line — scores 100; 43%, the CFPB qualified-mortgage line (Regulation Z), scores 55; 50% or more scores 0. The 55-point value at 43% is this site’s own mapping between two sourced anchors, and we say so rather than dress it up as someone else’s research. Two caps sit on top: carrying any balance at 8%+ APR caps the pillar at 60, and a high-APR balance larger than one month’s take-home caps it at 40 — at card rates, interest outruns what diversified investing has historically returned, so no ratio makes that debt healthy. Someone with no debt at all scores 100; rent is a living cost, not debt, and shows up in cash flow instead.
Future — projected balance against the 25× need
Current retirement savings and monthly contributions are projected to retirement age at a stated, adjustable 4% real return — or at the rate named in your own risk-comfort answer (1%, 2%, 4% or 5%), in which case the pillar says so on its card. The need is 25× a year of expected retirement spending — the 4% guideline (Bengen 1994; the Trinity study 1998), which assumes a US-style portfolio and a 30-year retirement, and is a planning benchmark rather than a guarantee. Retirement age defaults to 67 and spending to 80% of take-home — both stated conventions, both replaceable with your own numbers in the survey. Before 40, the pillar scores the better of trajectory and contribution rate, where saving 10–15% of gross counts as on-track on its own — that early, compounding has not had time to show.
The action rules, in order
The dashboard’s plan is the first three matches from a fixed, published list — a ranked to-do list is the closest this page comes to advice, so its logic is exactly where transparency matters most. In order: spending above income; a starter buffer before attacking high-APR debt when the runway is under one month (CFPB’s small-buffer finding); a payoff order for high-APR balances; an uncaptured employer match; a buffer below target; debt payments past the 43% line; and, when none of those fire, putting the savings rate to work. Every card names its source and links the calculator that does the math — what moves the number and why, never “you should.”
What the peer comparisons are, and are not
The percentile strips use the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, by age. They are context only and never enter the score: health here is absolute, and a 90th-percentile net worth can coexist with expensive card debt.
Privacy, as architecture
Answers, score, and history live in your browser’s local storage under one key, and the code contains no endpoint to send them to. “Delete my answers” removes that key entirely. The privacy policy covers the rest of the site; this page simply has nothing to add to a server, so nothing goes to one.