Guides › Concepts
How Wealth Scores Work
Understanding how your score is calculated makes it more useful, not less. This guide explains the structure behind every assessment on this platform: how questions map to domains, how domains combine into scores, and what those scores actually mean (and don't mean).
The Domain Structure
Seven of the eight wealth dimensions are broken down into domains, distinct sub-areas that together make up the full picture of that dimension. For example, Financial Wealth has four domains: cash flow, debt and credit, savings and investing systems, and optimization. Each domain has its own set of questions. Retirement Wealth is the exception: instead of questions, it compares your retirement savings with a published benchmark for your age and income (more on that below).
This structure matters because it tells you more than a single number. A financial score of 60% could mean strong cash flow but poor debt management, or vice versa. Seeing domain-level scores helps you identify exactly where your gaps are and what to work on first.
How Questions Are Scored
Each domain has three or four multiple-choice questions, and each response has an associated point value. Point values are not arbitrary. They're calibrated to reflect the relative health of each answer based on research, clinical guidelines, and expert benchmarks. Each domain also ends with a self-rating slider (for example, "How rested and recovered do you typically feel?"), so your own read of the area counts alongside the facts. In most assessments the question points and the slider each make up half of the domain score.
For example, in Physical Wealth:
- Exercising 3–5 days per week earns more points than 1–2 days, which earns more than rarely or never.
- Sleeping 7–9 hours consistently earns more points than 5–6 hours, which earns more than under 5 hours.
The goal is that the point values reflect real-world health implications, so the steps between answers aren't always equal. Moving from 1–2 to 3–5 exercise days a week earns twice as many points as moving from rarely to 1–2 days.
Domain Weighting
In some dimensions, domains carry different weight based on their estimated impact on the dimension's overall outcome. In Physical Wealth, for example, Fitness & Movement counts for 30% while Health Habits counts for 20%. In Security Wealth, financial and digital security count for 25% each while legal security and contingency planning count for 15% each. Financial, Medical, and Mental Wealth weight their four domains equally.
Retirement Wealth has no domains. Your score is your current retirement savings as a percentage of the J.P. Morgan Guide to Retirement savings checkpoint for your age and household income, capped at 100%.
Weightings are reviewed periodically as new research or updated guidelines suggest different relative importance.
What Your Score Represents
Your score is expressed as a percentage from 0–100. It represents how your current situation compares to the ideal or recommended state for each input in that dimension. A score of 75% means you're at roughly three-quarters of the ideal state across the inputs measured.
Scores are not graded on a curve against other users. A 75% means the same thing regardless of what other users have scored. This makes scores useful for tracking your personal progress over time, even as the community average changes.
What Scores Are Not
- Not a diagnosis. These are self-assessment tools for reflection and awareness, not clinical assessments.
- Not perfectly precise. Self-reported data has inherent limitations. Scores are directionally useful, not exact measurements.
- Not permanent. Scores reflect your situation at a point in time. Life changes, so retake assessments as things change to keep your picture current.
- Not comparable across dimensions. A 70% in Financial Wealth and a 70% in Social Wealth don't mean the same level of absolute achievement. They both mean 70% of the ideal within their respective dimensions.
The Overall Wealth Score
Your Overall Wealth Score is the simple average of all dimension scores you've completed. If you've completed four of eight dimensions, it's the average of those four. It's not weighted by dimension; each dimension contributes equally to the overall.
This means your weakest dimension drags down your overall score as much as your strongest lifts it. This is intentional: the platform is designed to encourage attention to dimensions you might otherwise neglect, not reward specialization in dimensions where you're already strong.
Honest Answers Produce Useful Scores
The scoring system is only as useful as the honesty of your answers. It's tempting to answer optimistically, to select what you're aiming for rather than where you actually are. The most valuable use of the platform comes from answering as accurately as possible, even when that produces an uncomfortable number. An honest low score is far more useful than a dishonest high one, because it points to where real improvement is possible.
Related guides
Sources
- WHO guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour: at a glance, World Health Organization, 2020
- About Sleep, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators: Methodology and User Guide, OECD and European Commission Joint Research Centre, 2008
This guide is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not financial, medical, legal, or tax advice. Consult a qualified professional for guidance specific to your situation.