Free Tools to Assess Your Financial Health

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published 8 February 2016

Your credit score is an important indicator of how you’re managing money, but it reflects only a slice of your overall financial health. Now you can generate a score that takes in the big picture.

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Start by asking whether your bank provides a free financial health score to its customers. For example, USAA offers members a Financial Readiness Score. Just log in at USAA.com and answer a series of questions about your income and expenses, insurance coverage, savings, investing risk tolerance, and estate plan. You’ll receive a score on a scale of 1 to 100, plus advice on how to strengthen weak areas.

Charles Schwab has a free-to-all Financial Fitness Quiz. You’ll be asked to answer 18 questions about insurance, money management, investments and estate planning, and you’ll receive your score on a 100-point scale. You’ll also see a comparison of your score with the scores of other people in your age range and get advice based on your replies.

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Among the suite of tools from HelloWallet, a developer of personal finance software, is the Financial Wellness Score. Also calculated on a 100-point scale, it derives from information you enter as well as a data feed from financial links you provide, such as bank, credit and retirement accounts. Recommendations for improvement and a comparison of how you stack up against your peers also come with the score.

HelloWallet has partnered with KeyBank to provide its tools to the bank’s customers. They are also offered as an employee benefit at companies such as Geico, T. Rowe Price, United Technologies and Vanguard.

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Lisa has been the editor of Kiplinger Personal Finance since June 2023. Previously, she spent more than a decade reporting and writing for the magazine on a variety of topics, including credit, banking and retirement. She has shared her expertise as a guest on the Today Show, CNN, Fox, NPR, Cheddar and many other media outlets around the nation. Lisa graduated from Ball State University and received the school’s “Graduate of the Last Decade” award in 2014. A military spouse, she has moved around the U.S. and currently lives in the Philadelphia area with her husband and two sons.