How well are you really keeping up with the Joneses?
See where you stand using federal household benchmarks — then learn when the wiser move is not to follow the crowd.
Compare with households at a similar stage of life.
Financial strength is not the same as visible consumption.
The Joneses are a reference point, not a life plan.
Our Data & Methodology
Federal surveys provide the data. JonesScore provides the comparison. Government agencies collect and publish the underlying survey responses and weights. JonesScore groups those records, calculates percentiles and scores, chooses how to handle answer ranges and small samples, and writes the explanations and practical guidance you see here.
Important: JonesPosition and JonesResilience are JonesScore measures. They are not government scores, official rankings, or financial advice.
U.S. only: JonesScore is currently designed for people living in the United States. Results may not be meaningful outside the U.S.
Federal Reserve — Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF)
Used for: established-household wealth, income, net worth, liquid assets, retirement, debt, and housing comparisons.
Current source: 2022 SCF; current JonesScore SCF dollar tables are normalized to 2025 dollars.
U.S. Census Bureau — Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
Used for: individual financial comparisons, particularly Young Adult Joneses ages 18–24.
Current source: SIPP 2025, using 2024 reference-period financial data. Young-adult benchmarks use person-level measures, survey weights, and one final-month record per person.
U.S. Census Bureau — American Community Survey PUMS
Used for: earnings and geographic comparisons where sample size supports them.
Current status: Where enough data are available, local income patterns can add context to household/family income comparisons. Other measures retain their national comparisons.
Federal Reserve — SHED
Used for: financial well-being and resilience research, including emergency capacity and financial stress.
What the government data provide — and what JonesScore does
Federal data provide: anonymized survey answers, dollar amounts, demographic and household fields, and survey weights.
JonesScore does: defines the comparison group, selects the applicable published measures, calculates percentiles, combines selected percentiles into JonesPosition and JonesResilience, uses representative values for answer ranges, applies sample-size fallback rules, and writes the interpretations and unJones-ing guidance.
JonesScore does not do: issue an official government score, predict your future, or provide individualized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice.
What are my Real Joneses?
Your Real Joneses are the people or households in the underlying federal survey data who provide a more meaningful financial comparison for your circumstances. A young adult reporting individual finances is compared with young adults rather than households of every age. Established households use the strongest peer-group structure supported by the SCF tables.
When a narrowly defined group would be too small or unreliable, JonesScore uses a broader comparison and discloses that choice.
Privacy and anonymous response data
No account, name, or email is required to receive a result. JonesScore may collect de-identified answers to improve the tool and understand broad patterns of use.
Your answers are not linked to your IP address. Website analytics may separately use IP addresses for aggregate traffic and general-location analysis, but analytics records are not joined to individual JonesScore responses.
This prototype currently keeps answers only in the browser session. Any future response collection must preserve this separation.
How optional local income context works
For eligible household/family results, JonesScore keeps the national financial-survey income percentile as the base comparison. It then adds a state-versus-U.S. difference from matched Census household-income patterns. This is an approximate local income-pattern adjustment, not a replacement benchmark, an official state ranking, or a state estimate from the national financial survey.
JonesScore matches age group and household situation, uses household-income patterns and survey weights, and applies the resulting state-minus-U.S. percentile shift only to the income component of JonesPosition. It does not change JonesResilience or any other measure.
“Just mine” results stay on their national comparison because the current local method describes household/family income, not a separately validated personal-income comparison. When data for a selected state, age, and household group are not sufficiently supported, JonesScore retains the national comparison and explains why.
Technical details for this local context
Source: 2024 American Community Survey 1-year public-use microdata. The preparation process validates and uses household identifier SERIALNO, state STATE, age AGEP, relationship RELSHIPP, person income PINCP, and person weight PWGTP.
Household-income construction: FULL_HOUSEHOLD_INCOME is the sum of reported person income for all people sharing the same household identifier. The reference person’s age and relationship pattern classify the age and household-situation group. The national and state curves use the same rules and weights.
Eligibility and fallback: a state cell is applied only when it has at least 500 unweighted reference households. Cells with 200–499 are review-only and cells below 200 are ineligible. R13.1 does not substitute a region or another state: unsupported cells retain the national comparison.
Calculation: displayed local context = SCF national percentile + (matched ACS state percentile − matched ACS U.S. percentile). The national SCF percentile remains the base. ACS does not provide an SCF state estimate and is never used as a direct personal-income replacement.
Why don't you always show state data?
Having data from a state does not automatically mean there are enough observations for a reliable comparison. R13.1 applies local context only to eligible state, age, and household-situation cells. When a cell is unsupported, JonesScore keeps the national comparison and tells you why.
Precision and limitations
Government surveys contain sampling and measurement uncertainty. JonesScore therefore avoids treating percentiles as perfect measurements. Formal uncertainty estimates are still being developed for some benchmark layers.
Educational use only: JonesScore does not provide individualized investment, tax, legal, or financial advice.
Current methodology snapshot
Prototype: JonesScore v0.7.5 — R14.2 Eligible-State Options Candidate
Benchmark families: SCF 2022 · SIPP 2025 (2024 reference period) · ACS PUMS geographic/earnings development · SHED resilience research.
What is JonesResilience?
JonesPosition describes where you stand relative to your Real Joneses. JonesResilience describes the strength of the financial foundation underneath that position. A person can have a modest comparative position and still be highly resilient because of strong reserves, manageable debt, retirement resources, and financial flexibility.
Your financial position
What the numbers might teach
Explore ways to improve
How to Reduce Your Debt
Understand balances, habits, and repayment approaches.
Start with a complete list of balances, rates, minimums and due dates. Compare highest-interest-first and smallest-balance-first approaches. Most importantly, understand whether the debt came from a one-time event or a repeated spending pattern.
Jones Wisdom: Fix the leak before you bail out the boat.
You Got the Raise. Don't Lose It.
Keep a promotion from becoming a permanently more expensive life.
Pause before creating new monthly obligations. Decide what the additional income is for before your lifestyle decides for you. Enjoy some of it if you choose — but preserve some of the new margin.
Jones Wisdom: The Joneses don't need to know you got a raise. Your balance sheet eventually will.
Before You Buy the Car
The payment is not the whole price.
Consider purchase price, financing, insurance, fuel or energy, maintenance, expected ownership period, and depreciation. A vehicle can be affordable as a monthly payment while still being an expensive capital decision.
Jones Wisdom: The payment is visible. Depreciation isn't.
Reality Has Bad Angles
Don't compare your unedited life with someone else's highlight reel.
Real homes get messy. Real careers stall. Real vacations go wrong. Social media lets us crop much of that out. Comparison can provide context without becoming a verdict on your life.
Jones Wisdom: Nobody posts a selfie with their car payment.
Habits Create a Life
Repeated choices compound.
Circumstances, luck and hardship matter. Habits matter too. What we repeatedly save, borrow, buy, maintain, postpone and do without gradually becomes a financial life.
Build Financial Margin
You do not have to spend your way into your income.
Margin is the space between your capacity and your obligations. A raise can purchase more consumption, more resilience, or a deliberate mix of both.
Benchmark Me Where I Live
Selecting a state optionally adds local income context to your national comparison. JonesResilience and other measures keep their primary national comparisons.