Americans who rate their financial health above average are nearly four times more likely to rate their physical health above average, and more than three times more likely to rate their mental health above average.

This single datapoint powerfully supports Melqart’s functional finance thesis because it shows that financial structure is not just an outcome of good health or mindset—it is a primary upstream driver of both. In other words, improving financial architecture (liquidity, buffers, protection, and predictability) does not merely improve net worth; it measurably changes sleep, behavior, stress, and long-term decision quality—exactly what a functional, root-cause approach is designed to do.