man pressing fingers to forehead in pain

According to the American Institute of CPAs' third-quarter results for its 2019 Personal Financial Satisfaction Index, corporate optimism is declining and CPA executives are turning a tad gloomy.

Still, according to the index, financial satisfaction is lingering near an all-time high, although the potential for it to decline may be increasing.

The PFSi, which includes the Personal Financial Pleasure Index and the Personal Financial Pain Index, reflects people's overall financial satisfaction—which, despite a tight job market, has been retreating. This latest installment is the third decline in the past year.

To come up with the final result, the PFSi calculates the personal financial satisfaction of a typical American from a number of economic factors.

Pain factors include inflation, personal taxes, loan delinquencies and underemployment, while pleasure factors include the proprietary PFS 750 Market Index, the AICPA's CPA Outlook Index, Real Home Equity Per Capita and Job Openings Per Capita.

While there has been a drop in the Pain Index thanks to a 3.3 percent drop in pain from personal taxes, the report adds that over the last three years, the personal taxes factor has been the largest contributor to financial pain for 10 of 12 quarters.

And even though the pain from loan delinquencies is down 4.7 percent from Q2, for loans and mortgages overall, and the rate of delinquencies on mortgages (2.59 percent) is well below the peak delinquency rate for mortgages (11.26 percent) recorded in the spring of 2010, the report adds that the rate of mortgage delinquencies "is still above what was typical between 1994 through 2003 (2.12 percent)."

While the Market Index and the Job Openings Per Capita Index were the two biggest contributors to the Pleasure Index, the latter has now declined two quarters in a row—the first time in seven years that it's done so—as well as decreasing quarter-over-quarter, for the third time in three years.

Job openings fell 2.6 percent, or 2.1 points on the index's scale, below the prior quarter.

The AICPA CPA Outlook Index found that CPA executives "have become somewhat more worried about the potential for an economic downturn in the year ahead."

In addition, the Inflation Index is up 4.1 percent from the Q2 level, while the Underemployment Index is up 1.5 percent over Q2.

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Pleasure, pain indexes predict potential economic downturn

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