How the Mr. Fino score is calculated
The exact method behind the 0–100 Financial Health Score: five weighted pillars — savings 25, debt 20, emergency cushion 20, protection 20, investments 15 — the nine numbers it reads, and the six-rung ladder it hands you.
Every Mr. Fino report starts with one number: a score out of 100. It looks simple — that is the point — but underneath it is a specific, opinionated method built for how Indian households actually earn, save and spend. This essay sets out exactly how the number is assembled, so you can judge whether you agree with it, and know which lever moves it most.
Five pillars, 100 points
The score is the sum of five pillars. Each measures a ratio, never a rupee amount — so a household on ₹40,000 a month is scored on exactly the same terms as one on ₹4 lakh. Earning more does not earn you points. Keeping more does.
| Pillar | Points | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Savings | 25 | Your savings rate — the share of income you keep |
| Debt | 20 | Your EMIs as a share of income |
| Emergency cushion | 20 | Months of costs your reachable cash covers |
| Protection | 20 | Term and health cover against what your family needs |
| Investments | 15 | Whether investing has started, and at what scale |
Savings — 25 points
Your savings rate is what is left after spending and EMIs, divided by income. Reach 20% and the pillar is full. Below that it scales straight down: 10% earns half, 5% earns a quarter. A household spending more than it earns lands at zero rather than tying with one that breaks exactly even, because the rate is signed before it is clamped.
Debt — 20 points
Total monthly EMIs divided by monthly income. At or below 30% the pillar is full. Above it, points come off steeply — a little over one point for every extra percentage point — so the pillar empties at roughly 48% of income committed to EMIs. Lenders begin to hesitate above 40%; the arithmetic is worse than their hesitation suggests, because every rupee promised to an EMI is a rupee that cannot absorb a bad month.
One deliberate asymmetry: if you have not told us your EMIs, this pillar scores zero, not full marks. An unanswered question is not the same as a clean answer.
Emergency cushion — 20 points
How many months of your actual costs — spending plus EMIs — your reachable cash would cover. Six months fills the pillar and it scales linearly below that: three months is half. Six is not a round number chosen for neatness. It is roughly how long a job search or a medical setback runs in India, and it is the line below which a shock turns into a loan. We wrote about where to keep that money and what counts as an emergency in how much cash an Indian household should keep liquid.
Protection — 20 points
Split in two. Term life cover is worth up to 14 points, measured against a benchmark of ten times your annual income — so someone earning ₹10 lakh a year is measured against ₹1 crore of pure term cover, and half that cover earns half the points. Health cover is worth the remaining 6: a family floater of ₹5 lakh or more takes all six, anything smaller but non-zero takes three, and none takes none.
Only pure term counts. An endowment or a ULIP that happens to carry a death benefit is an investment wearing a raincoat, and it is scored as neither properly. More on the sizing in how much term cover is enough.
Investments — 15 points
The smallest pillar, on purpose. Ten points for a monthly SIP measured against 10% of income, and five for accumulated corpus measured against half a year of income. Both scale rather than switch: ₹10,000 invested and ₹2 crore invested used to score identically, which was absurd.
It is last and lightest because investing is the pillar people reach for first and the one that helps least while the four below it are open. A SIP on top of no cushion and no cover is a bet, not a plan.
Ratios, not bands
An earlier version of this engine scored in steps: 15–20% savings earned 20 points, 10–15% earned 15, and so on. It read well and behaved badly. A household at 14.9% and one at 10.1% scored the same, and a single rupee could move you a whole band. Every pillar now scales continuously and is clamped to its own maximum individually, so a very large cushion cannot quietly pay for an absent term policy.
What it reads — and what it never asks for
Nine numbers, all of them yours to type. Seven are asked when you sign up — income, spending, EMIs, the cash you could reach in a day, how many people depend on you, your term cover and your health cover — which is the two minutes the score takes. The last two, your monthly SIP and your invested corpus, are added afterwards and are what the investments pillar reads; until you enter them that pillar sits at zero, which is the honest answer rather than a flattering one. Your date of birth is used for one thing only: quoting a realistic term premium for your age band.
There is no bank connection, no statement upload and no credit-bureau pull. Nothing is scraped and nothing is inferred from a transaction history, which means the score is only as good as your answers — and also that it cannot be wrong about you in ways you cannot see. The FAQ covers what we can and cannot see in more detail.
What the number means
- 70 and above · Good — the foundations hold. Work on the one pillar that is short.
- 45 to 69 · Average — usually one or two specific gaps, and usually faster to close than it looks.
- Below 45 · Needs work — start with EMI pressure and the cushion, in that order. Everything else waits.
The final number is clamped to a floor of 12 and a ceiling of 98. Nobody who answers honestly scores zero, and nobody scores a hundred, because a hundred would imply there is nothing left to review — and there always is.
The ladder the score hands you
A number on its own is a diagnosis, not a treatment. Alongside the score the report opens a six-rung ladder, and the rungs are in the order they are for a reason — each one is worth less until the one below it is clear. The labels and the tests are exactly these:
| # | Rung | Cleared when |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Term insurance in place | Pure term cover of ten times your annual income |
| 2 | Health insurance in place | Health cover of ₹5 lakh or more |
| 3 | Debt under control | EMIs below 30% of take-home |
| 4 | Surplus above 15% | At least 15% of income left each month |
| 5 | Emergency fund for 6 months | Six months of costs reachable within a day |
| 6 | Investments in place | A monthly SIP running, or a corpus on record |
Term cover sits first because it is the cheapest thing on the list and the only one that cannot be bought after the event. Investments sit last because they are the only rung that can wait. Exactly one rung is open at a time, which is the whole point: there is always one next thing, and it is never a list of twelve.
Why a score at all
Because a household balance sheet has five moving parts and no dashboard, and because "save more" is advice nobody can act on. A number with a published method behind it tells you two useful things at once: where you stand, and which single move buys the most ground. Every step in your plan is generated from the same five pillars, ranked by how much score — and how much safety — it actually buys.