Financial Literacy: How Many Can Pass the Test?

Financial literacy is meant to be basic stuff. For an example of how basic, here are eight questions from what is called the GFLEC Personal Finance Index. More on the index and the results in a moment, but take a moment to read the eight questions and look at the share of correct answers. These eight questions are the public face of a longer 28-question survey, which has now been given to large groups for a decade. Paul J. Yakoboski, Annamaria Lusardi, Andrea Sticha, and Fran Mastry provide and overview and background in “A decade of trackingfinancial literacy in America: Findings from the 2026 TIAA Institute–GFLEC Personal Finance Index” (June 2026). For these eight questions, roughly half or less are answered correctly–a level that hasn’t changed much for a decade. Here’s a breakdown of the scores on the 28-question version of the test in the last decade. In more detailed breakdowns, some groups do better than other–for example, those who are older tend to do better–but no subgroup…