The money questions most adults get wrong
Short answer
Most US adults get the classic interest and inflation questions right. The ones most get wrong are about risk, bonds and debt. In the FINRA Foundation's 2024 survey, 69% answered the interest question correctly, 58% the inflation question, 41% the diversification question and 25% the bond question, and 4% got all seven of its questions right.
If you’d like your own score before you see the answers, take the 12-question financial literacy test first. Its first three questions are reworded versions of the ones below, and every answer comes with the working.
Economists Annamaria Lusardi and Olivia Mitchell developed the three classic questions, which were first asked in a 2004 module of the Health and Retirement Study, a US survey of people aged 50 and over. In that first round, 34.3% answered all three correctly. The questions have since been used in surveys around the world (GFLEC), including the FINRA Foundation’s National Financial Capability Study (NFCS), which asked more than 25,000 US adults in 2024 and adds four more questions. We’ve reworded each question below (the surveys use US dollars); the right answer and the working follow.
What $100 at 2% a year becomes in five years
The question: you leave $100 in a savings account that pays 2% a year, and you don’t touch it for five years. Is the balance more than $102, exactly $102 or less than $102?
More than $102. The 2% is paid every year, not once, and from the second year it’s also paid on the interest already added. Compounded once a year, the balance is $102.00 after one year, then $104.04, $106.12 and $108.24, and $110.41 at the end of year five.
Answering “exactly $102” counts only one year’s interest. Over five years, interest on interest adds just 41 cents, but over 40 years the same $100 grows to $220.80, against $180 if the 2% were paid only on the original $100.
In the 2024 NFCS, 69% of US adults chose more than $102, down from 78% in 2009. In the original 2004 survey of over-50s, 67.1% did.
The same arithmetic runs against you on a loan. The 2026 P-Fin Index asks how long a $1,000 debt at 20% a year, compounded yearly, takes to double if nothing is paid. The answer is less than five years, because the debt is $1,200 after one year, then $1,440 and $1,728, and $2,073.60 at the end of year four.
In January 2026, 40% of US adults chose that answer, and a similar NFCS question had 29% right in 2024. On a credit card at 22.15%, the average rate on US card accounts that paid interest in the second quarter of 2026 (Federal Reserve), an untouched balance doubles in about 3.2 years if interest is added monthly (before fees).
Whether 1% interest keeps up with 2% inflation
The question: your savings earn 1% a year and prices rise by 2% a year. After a year, can the money buy more than today, the same, or less?
Less. With $1,000 at 1%, you’d have $1,010 after a year, but what cost $1,000 a year ago would now cost $1,020. Your $1,010 buys 99% of it ($1,010 ÷ $1,020 = 0.990), so in today’s prices your savings are worth about $990. The return after inflation (here about minus 1%) is called the real interest rate.
With 2026 figures, the gap is wider. The FDIC’s national average savings rate was 0.37% on 21 September 2026, and US consumer prices rose 3.7% in the 12 months to September 2026. If both held for a year, $10,000 would grow to $10,037 and buy what $9,679 buys today: about $321 of buying power gone. At 4.0%, the low end of the top high-yield rates Bankrate listed on 14 October 2026, the same $10,000 would end the year about $29 ahead of prices, before tax.
In the 2024 NFCS, 58% of US adults answered this one correctly. That’s up from 53% in 2021, after a fall in every survey since 2009 (65%). Adults aged 18 to 34 improved most, from 34% to 44%, and the FINRA Foundation’s report reads this as a sign that living through higher prices teaches people what inflation does to savings. The P-Fin Index uses 2% interest and 3% inflation instead; 48% of US adults picked the right answer in January 2026.
One company’s shares or a fund
The question: true or false, buying shares in a single company is usually less risky than buying a stock mutual fund?
False. A stock mutual fund holds shares in many companies. Put $10,000 into a fund spread evenly across 100 companies and each company holds $100 of your money, so if one goes bust you lose $100, or 1%. Put the whole $10,000 into that one company and you lose all of it.
Spreading money this way is called diversification. It cuts the damage any one company can do, but the fund can still fall when the whole market falls. Scroll’s Investing 101 lessons start with shares, bonds and index funds.
This is the question people most often answer with “don’t know”. In the 2024 NFCS, 41% of US adults answered correctly, 11% answered wrongly and 47% said they didn’t know; in 2009, 53% got it right. The P-Fin Index’s version gives three options, and 54% chose the fund in January 2026 while 35% said they didn’t know. In the 2004 survey, 52.3% were right and 33.7% didn’t know.
Questions about risk are where US adults score lowest. Of the P-Fin Index’s eight areas, comprehending risk had the lowest share of correct answers in 2026, at 36% (39% in 2017).
One of its questions compares two lotteries: a 5% chance of $200, or a 0.01% chance of $90,000. The first is worth more on average, because 5% of $200 is $10 and 0.01% of $90,000 is $9. In January 2026, 46% got it right.
The four other questions in the US survey
The mortgage question says a 15-year mortgage has higher monthly payments than a 30-year one but costs less interest in total. That’s true, and 69% of US adults knew it in 2024.
Take a $300,000 loan at the average rates Freddie Mac reported for the week of 8 October 2026: 7.40% over 30 years and 6.73% over 15. The monthly payments are about $2,077 and $2,651, and total interest comes to about $447,800 over 30 years and $177,300 over 15 (fixed rates, monthly payments, before fees, taxes and insurance). Even at the same 7.40% rate, the 15-year loan costs about $250,200 less in interest, because you borrow the money for half as long.
Scroll is education, not advice. Our lessons and calculators explain how money works in general. They don’t know your circumstances, so they can’t tell you what to do with yours. For that, speak to a qualified, regulated adviser in your country.
The bond question asks what happens to bond prices when interest rates rise. They fall, and only 25% of US adults got this right, the lowest score of the seven.
Take a bond that will pay $1,030 in a year, which is its $1,000 back plus $30 of interest. While new one-year bonds pay 3%, a buyer would pay about $1,000 for it. If new bonds start paying 4%, a buyer will only pay about $990 ($1,030 ÷ 1.04), since a new bond would earn them more. Hold it to the end and you still receive $1,030.
The other two are the debt-doubling question from the first section (29% right) and a question on probability (35% right).
What the latest results show
How answers to the three classic questions have changed:
| Question | 2004 (people aged 50+) | 2009 (all US adults) | 2024 (all US adults) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interest | 67.1% | 78% | 69% |
| Inflation | 75.2% | 65% | 58% |
| Diversification | 52.3% | 53% | 41% |
The 2004 figures come from the Health and Retirement Study, as reported by Lusardi and Mitchell, and the 2009 and 2024 figures from the NFCS report. The surveys asked different groups, so compare the 2004 column with care. Within the NFCS, the share answering at least four of the original five questions correctly fell from 42% in 2009 to 32% in 2021 and stayed at 32% in 2024.
The TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index (P-Fin Index) asks 28 questions across eight areas of everyday money, including earning, borrowing, saving and insurance. In January 2026, 3,602 US adults answered 47% of them correctly on average, a statistically significant drop from 2025, and the average has never been above 52% in the survey’s 10 years. A quarter answered 7 or fewer correctly.
That share was 20% in 2017, while the share answering 22 or more has barely moved (15% in 2026, 16% in 2017). Knowledge fell in five of the eight areas between 2017 and 2026. Gen Z averaged 38% and baby boomers 54%, and men averaged 50% against 44% for women, with a gap in every area except consuming (budgets and spending).
People also rate themselves higher than they score. In the 2024 NFCS, 64% gave their own financial knowledge 5 or more out of 7, yet only 32% of that group knew how fast compound interest doubles a debt. Adults who had taken part in financial education at school, college or work were more likely to get at least four of the seven questions right (58%, against 44% of those who hadn’t). The FINRA Foundation points out that this doesn’t show the education caused the difference; people who seek it out may already know more.
To see where you’d sit, take the financial literacy test. It starts with these three questions and covers credit cards, tax bands, fees and scams after them.
Drafted with AI assistance. Every figure was checked against the sources listed, on 14 and 15 October 2026.