Financial BMI from Lloyds - Bank Mass Index

By John Swindells 16 Mar 2008 | Comment
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Lloyds TSB has created a 'financial obesity' index, similar to the body mass index for our health, to determine what our financial health is.

It's at needtoknowaboutbanking.com, and asks a number of simple questions about your financial situation.

To be honest, the questions are really much too few and limited in range to make any kind of useful measurement. It doesn't even ask what your monthly expenditure is (even approximately), although personal debt is asked about.

After the test, it suggests the obvious measures - opening an ISA, increasing/starting a pension, making mortgage overpayments, and paying off your credit card. These recommendations are rather like saying "Lose weight by buying slimmer clothes."; that is, you can't do these things until you have your overall income and spending plans in order. There are certainly too many people who put their head in the sand when it comes to high credit/store card interest payments, but the root cause of these payments needs to be addressed first: overspending!

Maybe a better offering is the FSA Financial Health Check. Its questions are more detailed, and it provides targetted recommendations at the end. To be honest the information is sensible, but I don't think it will really hit home as you have to click around a lot to read plain text. There are no sliding scales of quite how healthy your finances are, or any prioritisations recommended for you to sort out any problems. Even their Managing Your Borrowing page (covering personal debt) doesn't suggest that you may need to curb your spending.

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