The Personal Financial Satisfaction Index (PFSi)

How happy are you with your financial situation right now?  In other words, do you feel personal financial pleasure or pain when it comes to your financial standing? 

That is what the Personal Financial Satisfaction Index strives to measure for the typical American. 

The PFSi is a quarterly economic indicator created by the American Institute of CPAs. This specific economic indicator weighs a variety of economic factors to calculate the financial standing of a typical American. These financial standings are only computed at a high level.

The main agenda of the PFSi is to calculate the difference between two component subindexes: the Personal Financial Pleasure Index and the Personal Financial Pain Index.  These two subindexes are each created of four, equally weighted proprietary and public factors, which ultimately measure the growth of assets and opportunities in the case of the Pleasure Index, as well as the erosion of assets and opportunities in the case of the Pain Index.

In other words, positive scores of the PFSi indicate that Americans are feeling personal financial pleasure. Negative scores, obviously, indicate that Americans are feeling personal financial pain. It might sound like a subjective emotional measure, but it’s not at all; it’s based on government statistics as well as proprietary AICPA data.

The PFSi has been mostly increasing from the third quarter of 2011 to the fourth quarter of 2019. Since then it has dropped dramatically. With the current pandemic still in place, unemployment and other economic factors have contributed to the drop in the index.  You can use the score as a measure against your own financial security and for planning purposes. 

Read more about the index here: https://www.aicpa.org/interestareas/personalfinancialplanning/community/pfsi.html

Or reach out to us and we’ll be happy to answer any questions.