Do You Know More About Personal Finance Than This High Schooler? - Your Money Briefing

Wall Street Journal

18-06-2025

More than 120 high-schoolers put their personal finance knowledge to the test in the Council for Economic Education's National Personal Finance Challenge. Host Oyin Adedoyin is joined by personal finance reporter Ashlea Ebeling, who helped turn the questions from the challenge into a quiz for Wall Street Journal readers, some of whom didn't score as well as the teenagers who competed.
Full Transcript
This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Speaker 1: Okay, here we go. It's time for the final round of the 16th annual National Personal Finance Challenge.
Caleb Lee: The only point where we really felt confident, "Oh, right. Oh, we got this. We're going to win," was at the last two questions on the final quiz ball. It was very intense, very stressful, but I think we all really enjoyed that intensity.
Oyin Adedoyin: That's Caleb Lee. He's 17 years old and he was part of a four-person team of students from Scripps Ranch High School in San Diego who recently won the Council of Economic Education's National Personal Finance Challenge. That means that he knows more about personal finance than a lot of adults. Here's Your Money Briefing for Wednesday, June 18th. I am Oyin Adedoyin for the Wall Street Journal. How much do you think you know about personal finance? We recently published two quizzes that put our readers' understanding of things like retirement accounts and investing terms to the test. The questions came from a challenge posed to high school students like Caleb Lee. Caleb, what sparked your initial interest in personal finance? And when did you decide to take that extra step and actually compete?
Caleb Lee: So I would definitely say my initial interest in finance came from my dad. My first savings, he helped me invest that into stocks like ETFs, index funds, and he also just overall talks about his experience with retirement accounts, mortgages, insurance, and taxes. I've also been to a few camps when I was younger in middle school. That have taught me a few of the basics and just got that interest going. And then what really led me to compete was my friend who was in the competition with me. His name is Ryan. He's the one who asked me, and he knew that I'd be willing to do this with him.
Oyin Adedoyin: Wow. So how did you go about, I guess, studying or practicing for this big challenge?
Caleb Lee: For the initial preliminary test, we actually were able to pass that with our pre-existing financial knowledge. But then once we passed that and qualified for the initial case study, we created the studying methods around the practice case studies that we did, and we basically decided, oh, we would split up this financial planning into sections. So there would be things like budgets, retirement planning, insurance, debt and loans, and different groups like that. And then each person would take one to two of these groups. And then we also studied a bit of general finance knowledge, like some gift taxes, trust, 529 to IRA rollovers, things like Medicaid qualifications.
Oyin Adedoyin: What would you say was your section of expertise?
Caleb Lee: For the quiz bowl, I actually studied a lot about bonds and financial ratios. I did a lot of research on my own using websites online or videos that I found. And there's this one specific website like Investopedia, but it has a lot of this more niche or advanced terms that I found on there, and I felt like it explained them pretty well. We also reached out to a few people that we knew were very well versed in their financial literacy skills. For example, Ryan knew some financial planner who was able to give us feedback, and there was definitely some helpful information from that as well.
Oyin Adedoyin: It sounds like you guys went through great lengths to really prepare for this and make sure you knew your stuff. And do you know more about personal finance than some Wall Street Journal readers? From those who took the quiz online, we know that only seven out of 10, for instance, knew what a limit order is when buying stocks. How does it feel to know more about personal finance than many adults?
Caleb Lee: Some of the adults in my life did take the test and they actually didn't end up getting all the questions right, and I was kind of surprised by that. I thought it was common knowledge for adults, but I just feel like financial literacy is really important because there's a lot of relevance no matter what field someone's going into because they're always going to have to deal with these topics. And even the case study shows how adequate financial literacy applies to any situation.
Oyin Adedoyin: In a few years, you'll be an adult. I'm curious what your goals are for the future.
Caleb Lee: I want to go to a good college and then I want to be able to get a job related to finance or related to engineering, actually, or a mix of both.
Oyin Adedoyin: Do you feel like more people should get into personal finance? What do you think might be stopping the younger generation from learning about it?
Caleb Lee: I definitely feel like it's a really important life skill. So I guess the biggest thing stopping people from learning is that it's not taught as a class in school. There are some schools with financial programs and economics classes, but at least in my area and the people that I know don't really have that available to them. So it would be a huge help if we could, I guess as a community, as a society, try to advocate for more financial literacy to the younger generation by implementing those classes or programs, like some of the camps that I went to were really helpful in getting me started.
Oyin Adedoyin: So how well did Wall Street Journal readers do on the quiz, and what does it tell us about financial literacy? We'll hear from reporter Ashlea Ebeling who helped turn some of those questions that Caleb was asked into an online quiz. That's after the break. The Wall Street Journal published two quizzes based off of the questions high schoolers were asked in the Council for Economic Education's Personal Finance Challenge. My colleagues Ashlea Ebeling and Ben Eisen worked on the quiz, and Ashlea joins me to discuss how our readers did. Ashlea, do you remember what you knew about personal finance? I know you're a tax whiz, but what did you know about personal finance in your teens?
Ashlea Ebeling: Oh, it was like my dad helped me. He had all the papers on a big desk literally every night. He was either doing medical bills or some other kind of paperwork and walked me and my brother through it. And my mom was the one who took me to the local bank to open up my first account.
Oyin Adedoyin: Yeah, I was the same way. I didn't take a personal finance class in high school. And my dad was an accountant, so he always... I mean, he still does my taxes to this day.
Ashlea Ebeling: Lucky you.
Oyin Adedoyin: Yeah. When I was younger, he'd always... I'd just take all the tax forms and all the complicated forms to him and he'd crunch the numbers. I felt like I didn't need to know as much about personal finances until maybe in college or something. So I took the personal finance quizzes, I took one and two. Some of these questions are hardcore.
Ashlea Ebeling: And the kids had it even harder than you had it because in the competition, it's an open-ended question.
Oyin Adedoyin: Oh, there aren't multiple choice.
Ashlea Ebeling: Right. So they have to come up with it off the top of their head.
Oyin Adedoyin: A lot of people engaged with these quizzes. I'm curious about how many Wall Street Journal readers completed the quiz and how they did.
Ashlea Ebeling: The first one, it was 50,000 people took it. And then they were saying, "Where are the rest of the questions?" So that's what led us to do the second quiz. People did really well. Nine out of 10 aced this question about certificates of deposit. That might also mean our readers are skewing older. It's not totally clear. But then only seven of 10 knew what a limit order is when buying stocks. So one thing I'd say is for young people taking the quizzes, if you see certain areas that you get wrong or if you're getting your first credit card, make sure you know what a cash advance is, what the difference between putting something on your credit card versus your debit card. When you're opening your first brokerage account, understand when you're checking the boxes, if you're putting a power of attorney on account. Just really ask questions.
Oyin Adedoyin: So according to the National Endowment for Financial Education, 28 states have passed financial literacy graduation requirement laws, which means that in those states, high schools need to have some kind of personal finance class or test for the students to graduate. What are you hearing from maybe teachers who are teaching personal finance now?
Ashlea Ebeling: Well, I think it's a huge thing. And in most cases, people really do learn from their family, and then that puts them either at an advantage or a disadvantage depending on what their parents or their older relatives know. Young people need to know even if their parents aren't financial whizzes, they could look into broader networks. And then having the broader network of teachers and coaches who are involved is super important. In this personal finance quiz, these kids, the ones who won, they did not have a personal finance class at their school, but it was one of the teachers who decided he wanted to work with these kids to take them through this competition. So that there, again, it's great. It's having the one adult who really cares about it.
Oyin Adedoyin: So Ashlea, you told me the other day that you took the personal finance quiz with your daughters who are college age, right? How'd they do?
Ashlea Ebeling: They follow me, which I'm lucky as a parent to say that. So when they saw the article pop up, they said, "Oh, we should take the quiz." And they did really well. They took economics at their high school, so they said that helped. I have to say the one daughter said the FSA HSA question, she said she thinks she got the answer to that one right because of watching YouTube videos. Some people say, "Oh, don't look at anything online," but there's good content if you look in the right place.
Oyin Adedoyin: For many people like us who didn't have financial literacy or maybe rigorous econ classes in high school, what are some of the resources out there that can help you get up to speed on complex personal finance topics that are actually reliable?
Ashlea Ebeling: So we hope, obviously, that you're all reading the Wall Street Journal and our coverage. But beyond that, a lot of just the brokerage houses, whether it's Schwab or Vanguard, they have really good explainers on their websites. And there's Investopedia. Don't forget your employer. So not like you're going to your HR department necessarily, but whoever the 401k retirement plan is with, which maybe it's Fidelity or Empower, they often have free advice that you can call up. They'll talk you through things when you have questions.
Oyin Adedoyin: That's Wall Street Journal reporter, Ashlea Ebeling. We're off tomorrow for the Juneteenth holiday, but we'll be back on Friday with a new show. And that's it for Your Money Briefing. We had additional production help from Coleman Standifer. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru and supervising producer Melony Roy. I'm Oyin Adedoyin for the Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening.