Budgeting, Understanding, Liquidity, Wealth, Assets, Risk & Knowledge
Answer five quick questions about your money and Bulwark Score will grade your financial readiness — plus show the specific moves that would raise it most. No sign-up, no email, no account.
Use your typical month. Rough numbers are fine.
That’s a savings rate of 8% of take-home pay. A common target is 20%.
Your emergency fund is what stands between a bad week and a bad year.
If you lost your income tomorrow, how many months could your savings cover the bills? Three months is the classic minimum; six is the gold standard.
Minimum payments on everything except your mortgage — cards, car, student loans, personal loans.
That’s 11% of your take-home pay. Lenders start worrying around 36% of gross income.
Be honest — the score only helps if it’s real.
Insurance is boring right up until the day it isn’t. Tap everything you currently have.
One uncovered emergency — a hospital visit, a fire, a lost income — can erase years of saving. Coverage counts for 10% of your score.
Your score is step one. These companion tools are in the works — each one picks up where this grade leaves off.
Enter your balances and see the exact month you’d be debt-free — and how much interest the avalanche vs. snowball method would save you.
Project where your current savings rate actually lands you at 60, 65, and 70 — and what one small bump per year does to the ending number.
A simple snapshot of everything you own minus everything you owe, designed to retake in a minute and watch climb over time.
Every week has a little money that evaporates — delivery fees, impulse buys, subscriptions you forgot. Here’s what that same amount would grow into by 2043 if it went into the market instead, assuming a 10% average annual return, added weekly.
Assumes a 10% average annual return, compounded weekly as each week’s amount goes in. Markets don’t move in straight lines — this is an illustration, not a promise.
Projected value in 2043
$0
From $100 a week, invested instead of spent.
Where it comes from
Five factors, weighted by how much each one protects you when life goes sideways. The math is shown, not hidden — move any slider above and watch exactly which factor moves your score.
A score is only useful if you know where you stand and what “better” looks like.
| Score | Band | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 0–39 | Needs attention | One surprise expense could turn into debt. The fastest wins: a starter emergency fund and stopping any revolving card balance. |
| 40–59 | Building | The foundations are going in. You have some cushion, but a job loss or big repair would still hurt. |
| 60–74 | On track | Solid habits are in place. Most emergencies are an inconvenience now, not a crisis. |
| 75–89 | Strong | Well cushioned, investing steadily, protected against the big risks. Fine-tuning beats overhauling from here. |
| 90–100 | Exceptional | Top-tier readiness. Your money system can absorb shocks and keeps compounding in the background. |
Letter grades: A+ 97–100 · A 93–96 · A− 90–92 · B+ 87–89 · B 83–86 · B− 80–82 · C+ 77–79 · C 73–76 · C− 70–72 · D+ 67–69 · D 63–66 · D− 60–62 · F below 60. Your grade is the headline in the score panel; the number is the detail underneath it.
Yes, but it’s demanding on purpose: six months of expenses saved, a 20%+ savings rate, no debt payments eating your income, retirement saving at 15%+, and full insurance coverage. Most people who score 75+ are in genuinely strong shape.
Readiness is about resilience, not wealth. A high earner with no emergency fund and heavy card debt is more fragile than a modest earner with six months saved and no revolving debt. This score measures the habits and buffers that decide how a bad month goes.
No — leave it out. Housing is a fixed living cost, not the kind of debt this factor targets. The debt load factor is about consumer and installment payments that compete with saving: cards, car loans, student loans, personal loans.
Completely. The calculator runs entirely in your browser. There is no account, no form submission, and nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere — closing the tab erases it.
No. It’s an educational snapshot based on widely used rules of thumb (three to six months of expenses, a 20% savings rate, capturing the full employer match). Your situation may call for different priorities — a licensed financial professional can advise on specifics.
Your paycheck, graded against the country. Enter your gross annual income and see how it stacks up against the median U.S. household income and the median full-time earnings for your age group — the two yardsticks that actually mean something.
Gross pay — before taxes and deductions. Salary, wages, tips, commissions: everything your job or jobs pay you in a year.
Use your salary or your best estimate of total earnings for the year. Bonuses and overtime count if they’re typical.
Earnings follow an arc: they’re lowest at the start, peak in the 45–54 bracket, then taper. Your bracket decides which median you’re graded against.
No made-up numbers: every comparison on this tab comes from the two federal publications below, and the figures are refreshed when new editions land.
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2024 (median household income, released September 2025); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers, Third Quarter 2024 (median weekly earnings of full-time workers by age, annualized at 52 weeks; earnings spread from the same release). Percentile positions are estimates modeled from the BLS-published overall earnings spread applied to your bracket’s median — a positioning guide, not an official rank. Grades are this site’s own scale.