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How Does Your Personality Type Affect Your Income?

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Myers Briggs Personality Type and Income

How Does Your Personality Type Affect Your Income?

You’ve just finished giving a presentation at work, and an outspoken coworker challenges your ideas. Do you:

a) Engage in a friendly debate about the merits of each argument, or

b) Avoid a conflict by agreeing or changing the subject?

The way you approach this type of situation may influence how much money you earn.

Today’s infographic comes to us from Truity, and it outlines the potential relationship between personality type and income.

Through the Myers-Briggs Lens

The Myers-Briggs personality test serves as a robust framework for analyzing the connection between personality and income, in a way that is easily understood and familiar to many people.

The theory outlines four personality dimensions that are described using opposing traits.

  • Extraversion vs. Introversion: Extroverts gain energy by interacting with others, while introverts draw energy from spending time alone.
  • Sensing vs. Intuition: Sensors prefer concrete and factual information, while intuitive types use their imagination or wider patterns to interpret information.
  • Thinking vs. Feeling: Thinkers make rational decisions based on logic, while feelers make empathetic decisions considering the needs of others.
  • Judging vs. Perceiving: Judging types organize their life in a structured manner, while perceiving types are more flexible and spontaneous.

For example, someone who aligns with extraversion, sensing, thinking, and judging would be described as an ESTJ type.

The researchers surveyed over 72,000 people to measure these four personality preferences, as well as 23 unique facets of personality, income levels, and career-related data.

Traits With the Highest Earning Potential

Based on the above four dimensions, extroverts, sensors, thinkers, and judgers tend to be the most financially successful. Diving into specific personality characteristics, certain traits are more closely correlated with higher income.

Personality TypeAverage Income Advantage (Annual)Trait(s) Most Correlated With Income Advantage
Extroverts$9,347Expressive, Energetic, Prominent
Sensors$1,910Conceptual
Thinkers$8,411Challenging, Objective, Rational
Judgers$6,903Ambitious

For instance, extroverts are much more likely to have higher incomes if they are quick to share thoughts, have high energy, and like being in the public eye. Thinkers also score high on income potential, especially if they enjoy debates, make rational decisions, and moderate their emotions.

The Top Earners

Which personality types earn the highest incomes of all? Extroverted thinking types dominate the ranks again.

Myers-briggs personality highest earners

Source: Truity

The one exception is INTJs, with 10% earning an annual salary of $150K or more in their peak earning years.

Personality and the Gender Pay Gap

With all these factors in mind, the researchers analyzed whether personality differences would affect the gender pay gap.

When the average salaries were separated for men and women, the results were clear: men of almost all personality types earn more than the average income for the sample overall, while all but two personality types of women earned less than the average.

Myers briggs personality gender pay gap

Source: Truity

In fact, women with high-earning personality types still earn less than men who do not possess those traits. For example, extroverted women earn about $55,000 annually, while introverted men earn an average of over $64,000.

Maximizing Your Potential

Are the introverted personalities of the world doomed to lower salaries? Not necessarily—while personality does play a role, many other factors contribute to income levels:

  • Level of education
  • Years of experience
  • Local job market
  • Type of industry
  • The particular career

Not only that, anyone can work on the two specific personality traits most aligned with higher incomes: set ambitious goals, and face conflict head-on to ensure your voice is heard.

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Healthcare

Ranked: The Best U.S. States for Retirement

Getting ready for retirement? See which states score the highest in terms of affordability, quality of life, and health care.

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Ranked: The Best U.S. States for Retirement

What is the most important aspect of retirement planning?

If you said finances, you’re probably right. But have you ever thought about where the best place is to retire? Being strategic about location can make a big impact on your quality of life, and perhaps help your savings go just a bit further.

To help break it down, we’ve visualized data from personal finance platform, WalletHub, which ranked the best U.S. states for retirement as of 2023.

Data and Methodology

WalletHub ranked each state using 47 metrics across three dimensions.

  • Affordability (7 metrics worth 40 points)
  • Quality of Life (22 metrics worth 30 points)
  • Health Care (18 metrics worth 30 points)

Here are some examples of what each dimension measures:

  • Affordability: Cost of living and taxation
  • Quality of Life: Quality of elder-abuse protections and crime rates
  • Health Care: Number of health professionals per capita and life expectancy

Visit the source for the full list of metrics.

The final scores (visualized as the bars in the infographic above) represent each state’s weighted average across all metrics. See below for more comprehensive results.

RankStateScoreAffordability
(rank)
Quality of Life
(rank)
Health Care
(rank)
1Virginia57.6161111
2TFlorida57.49428
2TColorado57.414275
4Wyoming55.65938
5Delaware55.563318
6New Hampshire55.03157
7South Dakota53.625309
8Minnesota53.54021
9Idaho53.2151731
10North Dakota53.0222520
11Utah52.7202426
12North Carolina52.6122335
13Missouri52.4172832
14Pennsylvania52.336312
15TMontana52.1241529
15TSouth Carolina52.143839
17Massachusetts51.94712
18California51.6321910
19Alaska51.326368
20Arizona51.1183525
21Wisconsin50.9341417
22Alabama50.714450
23Ohio49.827837
24Hawaii49.738294
25Nebraska49.3371615
26Iowa48.9351224
27Georgia48.674042
28Michigan48.0291836
29TMaine47.543613
29TNew Mexico47.5214630
31Indiana47.3233140
32TNevada47.2114241
32TTennessee47.224845
34TVermont47.14876
34TConnecticut47.144263
36Kansas46.8303233
37West Virginia46.434349
38Oregon46.1412121
39Texas45.9283734
40Rhode Island45.0393914
41Arkansas44.784944
42Maryland44.6462019
43Washington44.5451323
44Illinois44.3422227
45Louisiana43.9134547
46New York43.7501016
47Oklahoma43.6194743
48Mississippi40.8105048
49New Jersey40.2493422
50Kentucky38.8334146

According to this methodology, Virginia is currently the best state for retirement. Although the Southeastern state does not excel in any one dimension, it scores consistently well across all three to create a very balanced retirement profile.

This gives it a slight advantage over second place Florida, which excels in quality of life and affordability, but falls further behind in terms of health care. Third-placed Colorado is a mirror of Florida, offering excellent health care but a lower quality of life in comparison.

How to Interpret These Results

It’s important to remember that this ranking is purely based on data and the methodology above, and may not be tailored to your individual preferences.

For example, if you believe that health services will be very important during retirement, you may rank Minnesota (#1 in terms of health care) much higher than eighth place.

You may notice that prioritizing one dimension will often come at a trade-off in others. Looking at Minnesota once more, we can see that the state is also one of America’s most expensive.

Looking to retire outside of the U.S.? Check out this graphic on the top 25 countries to retire in.

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