When 1,700 People Rate Their Life, Money Comes In Last.
During the redesigned LifeWheel onboarding (V41), every user rates 8 areas of their life on a 1-10 scale. We pulled the average score per sphere across 1,700+ users in the first 25 days. The lowest-rated sphere is Money (4.53), then Love (4.84), then Career (5.01). The highest is People (6.19), then Joy (6.03), then Growth (5.91). The 1.66-point gap between top and bottom is large, and the pattern is consistent: spheres tied to societal markers cluster at the bottom; spheres about relationships, daily texture, and learning cluster at the top.
The ranking
| Rank | Sphere | Average score | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | People | 6.19 | |
| 2 | Joy | 6.03 | |
| 3 | Growth | 5.91 | |
| 4 | Contribution | 5.78 | |
| 5 | Health | 5.31 | |
| 6 | Career | 5.01 | |
| 7 | Love | 4.84 | |
| 8 | Money | 4.53 |
The pattern: outer status vs inner texture
Look at what's at the bottom: Money, Love, Career, Health. These are the four spheres people most commonly use as proxies for "how am I doing in life" when comparing themselves to others. They're status-tied. They're things you can rank a peer on at a dinner party.
Look at what's at the top: People, Joy, Growth, Contribution. These are about quality of relationships, day-to-day texture, learning, and being useful. They're harder to compare. They're internal.
This is a striking inversion of where most self-improvement content focuses. The wellness-and-productivity industry sells solutions to the bottom four spheres — financial freedom courses, relationship books, career coaching, fitness programs. Our data suggests users feel worst about exactly the areas that get the most external attention. Either the industry is responding to genuine pain, or chronic exposure to "you should optimize Money / Love / Career" makes people feel worse about their own.
Money is 27% lower than People
The gap between Money (4.53) and People (6.19) is 1.66 points on a 10-point scale — about 27% lower. To put that in context: if everyone in your friend group rates the same, the average person feels their relationship with money is about a quarter worse than their relationship with the people in their life.
This shouldn't surprise anyone in 2026. Inflation, housing, retirement uncertainty, the growing wealth gap between generations — the financial sphere is where the macro-economic story shows up in individual psyches. The Wheel of Life methodology was developed in the 1960s when these dynamics looked different; the pattern in our data is partly a reflection of a specific historical moment.
What this means if you're using a Wheel of Life
Three actionable takeaways:
- If your lowest sphere is Money or Love, you're not alone. 4-5 out of 10 is the modal answer. The instinct to feel ashamed about a low score in these areas is misplaced — almost everyone is here.
- If your lowest sphere is something else — Joy, Growth, People — pay attention. Most people score these areas highest. A low score here is a real signal that something is unusually off, not just "the normal struggle." Worth investigating.
- The Wheel's job isn't to identify the lowest score — it's to identify the surprising score. If your wheel mirrors the average (low Money, high People), that's the universal human condition; you don't need a coach for that. If your wheel is inverted (high Money, low People), that's where the real work is.
One more pattern worth noting: the four bottom spheres are also the four that respond fastest to external action — pay raises, doctor visits, dating apps, new jobs. The four top spheres respond more to internal practice — presence, attention, curiosity. That might be why the action-friendly spheres rate lowest: people have more leverage to dwell on what they could change.
Methodology
- Source: aggregated, anonymized event data from the LifeWheel iOS app.
- Cohort window: 2026-04-15 to 2026-05-10 (25 days, post V41 onboarding launch).
- Data:
onboarding_question_answeredevents with bothsphereandscoreproperties present. - Per-sphere sample: ~1,500-1,700 ratings (some sphere counts vary because users abandon mid-quiz).
- Averages are unweighted means across all sphere ratings in the window. We did not segment by demographics, country, or onboarding completion status — future research will.
- Scores are 1 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (fully thriving) per the canonical Wheel of Life scoring convention.
- Bias note: this is a self-selected sample of users who installed a self-improvement app. They probably skew toward people who already feel some area of their life needs attention. The absolute averages are likely lower than what a fully-representative population sample would show. The relative ranking between spheres is the more reliable finding.
- Data licensed CC BY 4.0. Citation: "LifeWheel sphere self-ratings, n=1,700+ (V41 cohort), May 2026" with a link back here.
How does your wheel compare?
Free 4-minute Wheel of Life assessment. No signup required. See where you sit relative to the averages above.
Take the Free Assessment →Related: our activation-funnel research on what fraction of users complete the assessment and the habits that follow. Questions or interesting cuts to suggest? Email alex@lifewheel.us.