Why We Built Helm
Helm is built by friends Humphrey & Henry. You may know the former from YouTube \ TikTok!
Humphrey is one of the leading voices in personal finance today, with years of experience as a former financial advisor and educator. He has spent his career helping people make sense of money without fear, shame, or unnecessary complexity.
Henry is a design engineer who cares deeply about building things with both beauty and utility. His background sits at the intersection of product, design, and systems thinking, with a focus on making complex ideas (hopefully) feel calm, clear, and usable.
We're building Helm because we kept seeing the same problem: many people were doing reasonable things with money, but still had no clear sense of where they stood. Most tools either talk down to you, push products, or jump straight to advice without first answering a basic question: what does my situation actually look like in context?
This quiz is intentionally free and private because this first moment of clarity should not feel gated, competitive, or judgmental. The goal is not to "win" or compare yourself to others for the sake of it, but to understand your position so you can think more clearly from a place of reality rather than anxiety. Context is not competition; it is orientation.
Humphrey is one of the leading voices in personal finance today, with years of experience as a former financial advisor and educator. He has spent his career helping people make sense of money without fear, shame, or unnecessary complexity.
Henry is a design engineer who cares deeply about building things with both beauty and utility. His background sits at the intersection of product, design, and systems thinking, with a focus on making complex ideas (hopefully) feel calm, clear, and usable.
We're building Helm because we kept seeing the same problem: many people were doing reasonable things with money, but still had no clear sense of where they stood. Most tools either talk down to you, push products, or jump straight to advice without first answering a basic question: what does my situation actually look like in context?
This quiz is intentionally free and private because this first moment of clarity should not feel gated, competitive, or judgmental. The goal is not to "win" or compare yourself to others for the sake of it, but to understand your position so you can think more clearly from a place of reality rather than anxiety. Context is not competition; it is orientation.
What Helm Is Built to Do
Helm helps you understand where you stand financially, and what your current position implies in context, using a small number of meaningful signals. Rather than asking for exhaustive detail, we focus on the inputs that matter most: income, assets, debt, and saving behavior. The goal is clarity, not perfection. Helm is designed to give you a grounded sense of your financial position relative to others, and how your habits relate to long-term financial outcomes in the data.
How the Model Works
Helm's model translates a small number of financial and behavioral inputs into a clear, population-level comparison. It combines balance sheet signals like income, assets, and debt with behavioral indicators such as how consistently someone saves, because habits often matter alongside raw numbers.
The model uses transparent, conservative weightings grounded in widely accepted financial principles: balance sheet strength carries the most weight, income adds context, saving behavior reflects discipline, and debt pressure reduces flexibility. The result is a percentile-based snapshot that helps you understand where you stand financially relative to your age, grounded in real-world data rather than guesswork.
The model uses transparent, conservative weightings grounded in widely accepted financial principles: balance sheet strength carries the most weight, income adds context, saving behavior reflects discipline, and debt pressure reduces flexibility. The result is a percentile-based snapshot that helps you understand where you stand financially relative to your age, grounded in real-world data rather than guesswork.
Training on Large-Scale Public Data
The model is built using publicly available, nationally representative U.S. household survey data that captures income, wealth, debt, and saving behavior across the full financial distribution.
The primary source is the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, which is carefully weighted to reflect millions of U.S. households at a population level. While the survey is not updated annually, it remains the most comprehensive and authoritative snapshot of household income, wealth, and debt available. Structural financial patterns change slowly over time, and the SCF is specifically designed to capture these long-run distributions rather than short-term market noise. All data is aggregated and anonymized, and never used to model individuals. By grounding Helm in real-world financial distributions rather than rules of thumb, the model provides clearer context for how a financial profile fits within the broader landscape.
The primary source is the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, which is carefully weighted to reflect millions of U.S. households at a population level. While the survey is not updated annually, it remains the most comprehensive and authoritative snapshot of household income, wealth, and debt available. Structural financial patterns change slowly over time, and the SCF is specifically designed to capture these long-run distributions rather than short-term market noise. All data is aggregated and anonymized, and never used to model individuals. By grounding Helm in real-world financial distributions rather than rules of thumb, the model provides clearer context for how a financial profile fits within the broader landscape.
Designing for Estimates, Not Illusions of Precision
Financial information is rarely exact. People estimate, round, forget, and change over time. Helm is intentionally designed to work with approximations, including "I'm not sure" responses, without breaking the model. This reflects how financial decisions are actually made and avoids false precision. The aim is to surface insight, not to demand perfect inputs.
Setting Clear Expectations
Results are estimates based on publicly available U.S. household survey data and are intended for general informational purposes only. Helm does not provide financial advice, guarantees, or personalized recommendations. It is a tool for understanding relative position and trajectory, not a promise of future outcomes. We hope it brings you a little clarity and perspective!
