How To Know If You Are In Good Financial Shape
Are you in good financial shape? How do you know if you are on the path to financial success or financial failure? In this post, you’ll be able to take a short, 7 question quiz to see if you are in good financial shape or not, and learn more about improving your personal financial situation.
How are you doing with your finances? Are you looking to improve your financial situation this year? Do you know if you are in good financial shape right now?
Before improving your personal finance situation, let’s see where you are currently with your personal finances.
In this post, I have created 7 easy to answer questions to determine your financial shape.
With this personal finance quiz, you can understand where you are in your personal finance journey and get some recommendations to better your financial future.
Let’s get into this personal finance quiz now!
7 Questions to Determine if You are in Good Financial Shape
How can you know if you are in good financial shape? What are the principles and foundations of personal finance, and how can you get started on your financial journey?
To answer these questions, I’ve created a simple 7 question quiz for you to take to determine if you are in good financial shape.
Below, I’ve listed the 7 questions you can answer to determine if you are solid financial shape, and in the following sections of this post, you can see the scoring for each of these questions.
Let’s get into each of these questions to determine your financial shape now.
Make sure to grab a pencil or something else to track your score!
1. Do You Track Your Income and Expenses?
The first question is easy: do you track your income and expenses? Do you use a spreadsheet or use a personal finance tracking software tool to understand how much you spend on different categories each month?
Knowing your income and tracking your expenses is one of the most important things to do if you want to improve your financial situation.
One of my favorite quotes is “What gets measured, gets managed.” If you know how much you spend on food, you will be able to adjust your spending habits if it’s too much.
Likewise, if you don’t know your spending habits, then you won’t be able to improve on them!
If you track your income and expenses on a monthly or yearly basis, you get 1 point. If you don’t track your income and expenses, then you get 0 points.
2. Do You Know Your Net Worth?
The next question is similar to the first question: do you know your net worth?
Your net worth is the what you get if you add up all of your assets and subtract your liabilities.
If you know your net worth, then you have a snapshot of your current financial position.
Personal finance is similar to navigation: tracking your income and expenses is like knowing how fast and in which direction you are going, and your net worth is your current location.
If you know your net worth, you get 1 point. If you don’t know your net worth, then you get 0 points.
3. On Average, How Much Time Do You Spend a Month Learning about Personal Finance?
Next, let’s look at your habits.
On average, how much time would you say you spend learning about personal finance on a monthly basis?
Learning about personal finance could include:
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reading personal finance books
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listening to podcasts or videos about personal finance
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reading personal finance blogs
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talking with professionals in the personal finance industry
By learning personal finance, you can start to discover more tips to further improve your financial situation.
If you spend over 5 hours a month learning, reading or thinking about personal finance, you get 1 point. If you don’t spend over 5 hours a month on learning, reading or thinking about personal finance, then you get 0 points.
4. Do You Have Any Debts?
Next up, do you have any debts?
While being in debt isn’t necessarily bad, being debt-free is amazing and a fantastic goal.
Do you have a mortgage? What about credit card debt? Do you have student loans or other personal loans?
Again, being in debt isn’t necessarily bad. Honestly, I have some debt and sometimes debt can be a good thing to have.
However, having no debt can be very beneficial for being in good financial shape.
If you are debt-free, then you get 1 point. If you have any debts, then you get 0 points.
Bonus: Do You Pay More Than the Minimum Payment on Your Debts?
If you have debt, have no fear! You can still get a point for this question.
Do you pay more than the minimum on your debts?
If you pay more than the minimum on your debts, you will be able to crush your debt much faster.
Paying more than the minimum payment on your credit card, for example, is essential for getting out of debt.
Even paying $100 more than the minimum a month can be extremely beneficial for your debt situation.
If you pay more than the minimum on your debts, you get 1 point! If you only pay the minimum on your debts, you get 0 points. If you are debt-free, you don’t get an extra point.
5. Do You Have an Emergency Fund?
Next, do you have an emergency fund?
The common definition of an emergency fund is if you have 3-6 months expenses saved in a safe account.
These 3-6 months of expenses are important in case of emergency (loss of job, medical emergency, broken down car, etc.)
At the very least, having an emergency fund is good to have to sleep well at night.
If you know you don’t have to worry about emergencies, then you’ll be able to sleep soundly.
Saving $1,000 is a great start for your emergency fund, but over time, getting to 3-6 months of expenses is a great goal to have.
If you have an emergency fund, you get 1 point! If you don’t have an emergency fund, you get 0 points.
6. Do You Have Investments for the Future?
Next, let’s talk about your future plans. Do you have any investments for your future?
Do you have any of the following?
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Stocks
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Bonds
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Rental Properties
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Business
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Precious Metals
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Cryptocurrencies
If you have some of these assets in your possession, and you plan to keep them to sell in the future, then you are investing for the future.
Investing for the future is a fantastic
If you have investments for the future in a brokerage account, retirement account, rental properties or other investment vehicles, you get 1 point. If you don’t have any investments for the future, you get 0 points.
Bonus Question: Are You Using Any Tax-Advantaged Accounts?
Another bonus question for you!
If you are using a tax-advantaged account, such as a 401(k), IRA, 457(b), etc, then this is great!
These tax-advantaged accounts allow more flexibility in your investing and financial situation.
If you are using tax-advantaged accounts for your investments, you get an extra 1 point! If you aren’t using tax-advantaged accounts for your investments, you don’t get any extra points.
7. Do You Have Any Financial Goals?
The 7th and final question is do you have any financial goals?
Financial goals can help you align your current actions with where you want to be in the future.
However, your financial goals need to be specific.
You can’t just say, “I want to become rich someday.”
What is rich? When is someday?
Instead, a true financial goal is “I want to save 30% of my income this year” or “I want to pay off $5,000 of debt this year”.
Concrete goals will bring clarity to your situation and help you focus on improving your financial situation.
If you have any concrete financial goals, you get 1 point! If you don’t have any financial goals, you get 0 points.
What’s Your Total Financial Situation Score?
How was this financial quiz? Hopefully it was pretty easy to complete!
Now, let’s take a look at your final tally. How many points did you have?
If you have over 7 points, then you are a financial superstar! You are in great financial shape and are most likely on your way to achieving financial success.
If you have a score of 4, 5 or 6 points, you are in pretty good financial shape. With a score of 4, 5 or 6 points, you have taken some steps to building wealth, but still have some work to do. Overall though, you are in a great spot.
If you have a score of 1, 2 or 3 points, maybe you just started on your personal finance journey or don’t know where to start improving your financial situation. Luckily, getting a better financial score can happen by taking some simple steps for building wealth!
If you have a score of 0 points, then it’s time to get to work!
Whatever your score is from this quiz, it just represents your current situation, and does not have any affect on your future financial situation.
You can now take this score and start making plans for a successful future.
Now, let’s learn now how you can get into better financial shape today.
How You Can Get into Better Financial Shape Today
After taking this quiz about personal finance, you now have a better understanding of your personal finance situation.
At this point, what’s next? What are the next steps you can take to learn more about personal finance and improve your personal finance situation.
On this website, I have a few resources you can read to learn more about personal finance and grow your savings.
I’ve listed them below:
Hopefully with this personal finance quiz and personal finance article, you can get on the way to achieving the financial success you want!
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