Americans 55 and Older Answer 3.7 of 7 Financial Literacy Questions Correctly, the Best of Any Age Group. The Youngest Adults Get 2.7
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If your savings account pays less than the inflation rate, can you buy more or less with that money a year from now? When interest rates rise, what usually happens to bond prices? Does a 15-year mortgage cost less in total interest than a 30-year one? These are the kinds of questions you might find on a seven-question money quiz from the FINRA Investor Education Foundation’s nationwide financial literacy study.
The 2024 results rank Americans by age, and the order is clear, as adults ages 55 and up answered 3.7 questions correctly on average. Individuals between the ages of 35 and 54 got 3.2, and the youngest adults, ages 18 to 34, scored 2.7. The ranking matters because the study finds financial literacy is strongly correlated with an easier time making ends meet, spending less than you earn, and planning ahead.
How Each Age Group Ranked on the Money Quiz
- Ages 55 and up: 3.7 correct answers out of 7
- Ages 35 to 54: 3.2 correct answers out of 7
- Ages 18 to 34: 2.7 correct answers out of 7
Even the top group barely clears the halfway mark, and across all ages, only 4% of people got all seven right, and just 46% got at least four. The quiz covers interest rates, inflation, risk and diversification (spreading money across many investments so one bad pick can’t sink you), bond prices, mortgage length, compounding interest on a loan, and basic probability.
Why Adults 55 and Older Pull Ahead
Most of these questions test things people learn by living through them. Someone in their 60s has likely signed a mortgage, watched a loan balance shrink, and seen a retirement account rise and fall with the market. After a few decades of that, questions about interest and investing feel familiar instead of abstract.
Older Americans also have more money on the line. Federal Reserve data for the second quarter of 2026 shows households ages 55 to 69 hold 41% of all U.S. household net worth and 49.5% of workplace retirement plan assets as 401(k)s. People managing that much have every reason to learn how it works. Still, the survey shows a link between age and scores. It can’t prove that getting older by itself makes anyone better with money.
The benefit shows up in daily life, especially among people 55 and up, as 59% of this group says covering expenses and paying bills isn’t difficult at all. Among 18 to 34-year-olds, it’s 31%. Age, income, and knowledge all overlap here, but the gap is wide.
Where Even the Top Scorers Slip
Inflation is one spot where older adults stalled. Among people 55 and up, the percentage who answered the inflation question correctly stayed at 72% from 2021 to 2024. Over the same stretch, young adults jumped from 34% to 44%. The study’s read is that living through a burst of high prices teaches people how inflation eats away at buying power.
Knowing the concept doesn’t make the bills smaller, either. A government price index built around the spending of Americans 62 and older hit 368.1 in September 2026, its highest reading in the past year. It leans heavily on housing and medical care, two costs that take a bigger bite out of retirees’ budgets.
Fees and scams aren’t on the quiz at all, and that’s where gaps get expensive. A small yearly fund fee comes out of the balance every year, so it compounds against the saver. Medicare impersonation calls and payment scams that push people to wire money or pay with gift cards go after older adults because they have bigger balances.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s draft strategic plan calls for helping older Americans spot “increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes.” Overconfidence makes it worse: 64% of people rate their own financial knowledge highly, despite the low quiz scores.
One Lesson Worth Passing Down to a Grandchild
If there’s one idea to teach the next generation, it’s compound interest. The quiz question on compounding interest on a loan was one of the toughest, with only 29% of people getting it right. Compounding just means you earn, or owe, interest on past interest, not only on the original amount.
Here’s how it plays out on a loan. Borrow $1,000 at 20% a year and pay nothing back, and you’ll owe $1,200 after one year. After two years, it’s $1,440. The second year costs more because the interest is charged on the first year’s interest, too. Credit card balances grow exactly this way.
The same math works in your favor when you save and invest, and it rewards whoever starts first. Older adults scored highest largely because decades of mortgages and retirement accounts taught them these lessons the slow way. A grandchild who learns compounding at 15 doesn’t have to wait that long, and that one idea explains why debt snowballs, why small fees matter, and why starting early beats starting big.
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David Beren has been a Flywheel Publishing contributor since 2022. Writing for 24/7 Wall St. since 2023, David loves to write about topics of all shapes and sizes. As a technology expert, David focuses heavily on consumer electronics brands, automobiles, and general technology. He has previously written for LifeWire, formerly About.com. As a part-time freelance writer, David’s “day job” has been working on and leading social media for multiple Fortune 100 brands. David loves the flexibility of this field and its ability to reach customers exactly where they like to spend their time. Additionally, David previously published his own blog, TmoNews.com, which reached 3 million readers in its first year. In addition to freelance and social media work, David loves to spend time with his family and children and relive the glory days of video game consoles by playing any retro game console he can get his hands on.
