U.S. News & World Report posted an excellent six-question financial literacy quiz that most 12th graders can pass. Can you?
The quiz is produced by the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy and asks several surprisingly complex questions about credit, savings, and loans.
There’s no shame in missing a question. U.S. News & World Report’s very own Alpha Consumer missed one, and in the interests of fairness and besmirching our own (good?) name on the internet, we had to guess (correctly!) on one or two ourselves.
Share your results in the comments.
Quiz: Are You Smarter Than a 12th Grader? [U.S. News & World Report]
(Photo: Getty)
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@Erwos:
The page said that the average score was about 52% for 12th graders.
I got all 30 questions right on the full quiz.
5/6 here — I lost out on the student loan question. I have no clue about them, never having had them… Of course, I went to school in a time when I paid $2000 a semester for a full course load…
Thankfully, I’ve got about 15 more years until I have to be ready to act on student loans, and that’s only maybe..
Maybe my son will want to be an electrician or plumber. Then he’ll be able to charge people $100 to walk through the front door.
5/6. Got the last one about savings wrong.
Question 1 is bogus because it doesn’t tell you how they borrowed the money. You can’t assume that the car is collateral if they both took the money from a line of credit for example.
oh man, 2 out of 6.
but in my defense the quiz is bias against Canadians so i think i did pretty well,
Apparently I’m at least as smart as a 12th grader. I got me my score, and it was six out of six.
6/6 here, although I guessed a little at the bond question. Just wasn’t 100% sure if a CD at a bank is covered by FDIC.
5 out of 6
I got all of them but the last one. I figured a stock is risky enough to have be unwise of a choice. I went with a US Savings Bond.
My high school was excellent, but they didn’t teach any of these issues. Only through personal curiosity and experience did I learn anything about personal finance.
I highly doubt most high school kids know the answer to these questions. I doubt many high school kids even know what “collateral” is.
(Score: 6/6)
5/6 for me, missed #4.
For those of you complaining about #6, I’d like to challenge you to point out any single 18-year span in history where stocks underperformed any of the other three choices. Remember, this is for an 18-year period. Yeah, in the short term, stocks may get out-performed when the market has a bad year or two, but over an 18-year period, as the question asks, “stocks” is the easy answer.
6 of 6 in like 2 minutes, tops. Where’s the next one?
Missed #4. So, um, have they started teaching this stuff everywhere, now? ’cause beyond the stock market game in freshman econ, I don’t think there’s much going on.
#1 I learned first from Clark Howard.
). I mean, wouldn’t you have loved to have had some Enron or SCO stock? Right now, maybe Sears? Averages v. when you actually want to take it out, hmmm…
#2 I reasoned, since it said federal, and I wasn’t sure about CDs and state bonds.
#3 Is all over this website, TV, radio, etc..
#4 I just kind of guessed. I knew two it wasn’t, and that’s it. I guessed wrong.
#5 I reasoned, since I know mine isn’t taxed (all 1.25% of it), but it doesn’t seem like the guv mint would let that slip as a source of some revenue.
#6 Is common knowledge, though we also know stocks are much more risky (mutual funds or ETFs, then?
Many of you are smarter than me-I am a 12th grader and only got 2/6 right. My school boasts about being a ‘college prep’ academy, but I’ve never been taught about these things. Man, I need to learn more about finance.
I sucked ass I got 1
Today: 5/6
as a 12-grader: 1/6
I’m pretty sure that #6 is the only one I would have had a clue on back then.
The college loan one got me too, but then again, I didn’t have any of those, so I’m not sure how I could have known or even should have known. Oh well, looks like we’ll have to stick to paying for our kids’ education in cash. Drat!
I blew it on number 4, didn’t read the question correctly.
100%, glad business school payed off so well!
If I was supposed to have learned this in Economics, I certainly don’t recall. It was, however, the only class I completely cheated my way through because I hated it so much. I’m surprised I got them all right, though. It just takes a little logic.
4 of 6 for me.
I missed the questions about Financial Aid/College Loans and the investments for the newborn.
Ah well … at least I’m s-m-r-t smart otherwise.
I got six sixths! Now I can feel smug all day. Right on!
4 out of 6. Coincidentally, I missed questions #4 and #6. In my defense I don’t have or want kids, and busted my ass to get through college loan free.
@bdsakx: Me too. Must be a different era now.
5/6, got #2 wrong, didn’t have any idea and almost went with the right one, but changed it at the last moment. Not too bad!!
Working in the education sector, I must say I take these negative findings very seriously. Oh wait, is that bad grammar? I guess I skipped that day.
0h, ya! I B Smurt!
Antics aside, I did have to narrow down the college loan one. Ah, the benefits of multiple guess.
I learned nothing about personal finance in high school OR college. Which is why I ended up with $15,000+ in credit card debt.
The U.S. public education system needs needs to develop more focus on giving kids a working knowledge of basic personal finance prior to graduation. We already have too many consumers who misuse credit cards and can’t keep a budget.