Americans'positive outlook ratings for their finances down than last year

Americans' positive outlook ratings for their finances are down by five percentage points than last year, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

About 47 percent Americans are more likely to say their financial situation as a whole is "getting better", and it was 52 percent last year, which was the first time since before the recession that this sentiment reached a majority level, according to the April 6-10 poll.

Around 38 percent of Americans say it is "getting worse", at 38 percent.

Fifty percent of Americans rate their personal financial situation as either "excellent" or "good," the highest level recorded since before the 2008 economic downturn and sightly higher than the 46 percent recorded last year, found the poll.

Americans' assessments of their current financial situation and their expectations for the future have recovered quite a bit from the recession and immediate post-recession years. But these ratings are not as positive as they were at most points prior to the recession, Gallup found.

The poll comes out seven years after the economy tanked in 2008 and sparked a recession that continues to impact millions of people today.

While much of the economy has improved, there remain millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans who believe there is no way out.

When Gallup began asking this question in 2001, Americans were a bit more likely to rate their financial situation positively, with slight majorities saying their situation was excellent or good in most polls from 2001 to 2007, Gallup said.

These ratings dropped during the recession, however, and remained low in the years that followed.

In 2008 -- the year the economy took a nose dive -- less than half described their situation positively, and a record-low 41 percent of Americans gave excellent or good ratings in 2010 and 2012. Americans' ratings began to improve in 2013, according to Gallup.

Comparable to their views of their current financial situation, Americans' projections for the future of their finances have recovered from their fairly pessimistic lows during the recession and immediate post-recession years, Gallup found.