

The original concept of The Wheel of Life is attributed to the late Paul J. Personal Growth: Alternatives include Learning, Self-Development or Spiritual.Fun & Leisure: Some other ideas for this category label include Leisure Time, Sports, Recreation, Play, Creativity or Enjoyment.Finally, this wheel of life category can also switch to “Work Environment” for career or business people.

This category could split into two for work and home environments.

Through self-knowledge, it empowers and gives you focus and direction.ĭisclosure: This blog contains affiliate links. More than an assessment, the wheel can help you to become more self-aware and more motivated to make changes and create a fulfilling life. Most importantly, the life wheel scoring system also allows you to see right away which areas of your life might be deficient or need improvement. This gives you an immediate overview of your current “life balance”. You rate your level of satisfaction within each area, then map this onto an image of a wheel. It usually consists of 6-10 categories or areas considered important for a whole or balanced life. The Wheel of Life or Life Balance Wheel is a popular visual tool or worksheet exercise used to help give you a snapshot of how balanced or fulfilled your life is. Then do the second step to help you to visualize where you want to go.As we begin a new year, resolutions or commitments often come to the forefront. Do the first step of the assessment and celebrate where you are (and remember that every ranking above a 1 is a success!). The Financial Wheel of Life is useful during coaching relationships but it is one that you can use on your own as well. That’s progress that you can work towards! And no, marking 10’s for all 8 categories is not the point!Īsk yourself “at what number would I like to be and what would that look like?” Maybe now you give your budget a ranking of 3 (you occasionally look at your checking account balance and activity with your bank’s app) and you would like to increase that to a 6 (you collect receipts when you make purchases and look at them once a week, comparing them to your bank's app). Go around the wheel again and mark at what level you’d like to strive towards. Once you have finished your financial wheel, what’s next? Remember that if you are giving a category a rank of higher than a 1 it means there is something positive going on there! Financial Wheel of Life Step 2 Maybe you aren’t saving much (or anything) in your retirement account but you make all of your debt payments on time. Maybe you don’t actively keep a budget but you are contributing to your emergency fund. These are strengths!Īnd don’t worry about recording tremendous strengths in all 8 categories. Maybe you always file your taxes on time, or that you carry health and auto insurance. Print a copy of this worksheet and try it for yourself.Īs you considered every financial category did you find that you had some satisfaction with one or more of the categories? And to be clear, giving a ranking of 2 or higher reveals that there is at least something going right in that category. On this worksheet look at each of the 8 financial categories and rank your current level of satisfaction for each one on a scale of 1-10, with 1 signifying “this can’t get any worse!” and 10 signifying “this is wonderful!” Insurance/Asset Protection Personal Financial Goals Retirement Savings Credit/Debt Management When I begin to work with clients in my financial coaching practice I ask them to complete a common coaching assessment tool called the Financial Wheel of Life (shown here): Financial Wheel of Life Categories If I had a nickel every time a person said to me “I’m not good with money” I’d be rich! The Financial Wheel of Life is a useful tool both for celebrating small victories in your current money management and for setting positive intentions for where you’d like to be.
