Here's a fact worth sitting with: the average American adult correctly answers fewer than half the questions on a standard personal finance quiz.

A survey designed to test basic functional knowledge, things like how interest works, how to assess risk, how to borrow responsibly…and we can’t get half the answers right.

According to the TIAA Institute's Personal Finance Index (a 28-question survey of financial knowledge administered with researchers at the Stanford University Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center) the average score this year hit just 47 percent, the lowest in the survey's 10-year history.

Why It's Happening

Researchers aren't entirely surprised. Americans have been under financial stress of one kind or another since the Covid-19 pandemic, including inflation that has driven up the cost of everyday essentials. At the same time, the spread of self-described financial influencers on social media has made it increasingly difficult to discern what advice is actually useful.

There's also a confidence problem, particularly for women. A National Bureau of Economic Research working paper co-authored by Stanford's Dr. Annamaria Lusardi suggests that a significant portion of the financial literacy gender gap may reflect women's uncertainty about their own knowledge rather than a true lack of understanding. When forced to choose an answer on the financial literacy questions rather than selecting "I don't know," women often chose correctly. The knowledge is there. The confidence isn't.

Perhaps most worrying for the future: according to the same TIAA Institute index, young adults in Gen Z performed the poorest as a group, answering just 38 percent of questions correctly on average.

What Parents Know (And What The System is Missing)

Parents are paying attention. A March 2026 survey of 2,000 U.S. parents by Intuit found that 88% believe financial literacy should be treated as a core school subject, right alongside math and science. Nearly two-thirds also said that recent financial pressures have pushed them to be more transparent with their kids about how money actually works in their household.

The problem is that the system hasn't caught up. As of this year, just 10 states have fully put personal finance course requirements into effect for high school students. The majority of kids graduating today will do so without a single dedicated class on how money works.

Most of the conversation about financial literacy focuses on high school and beyond. But research from the UK's Money and Pensions Service tells a different story: children's money habits and attitudes begin forming before the age of seven. By high school, the foundation is already poured.

Meanwhile, 81% of high school students say they get their financial knowledge primarily from their parents. Roughly 57% of American adults are financially literate. The math there isn't great.

If kids are learning about money from adults who are themselves under-equipped, and schools aren't filling that gap, the cycle continues. The question is where it gets interrupted.

Starting Small Helps Build a Foundation

Financial stress crowds out our ability to learn. That's what researchers found when they looked at why adult scores keep declining. The same dynamic applies to kids, just less visibly.

We built Financial Literacy into Grogo as one of its seven core question subjects because the kids who will eventually sit in a high school personal finance class are already on their tablets and phones right now. Short, frequent exposures to concepts build familiarity and retention over time. A middle schooler who has encountered compound interest a dozen times in low-stakes, grade-appropriate questions will be in a very different place when it shows up in a classroom, or later in real life.

The goal isn't to produce a ten-year-old who can balance a portfolio. It's to make sure they're not starting from zero when the stakes get high. The system will catch up, eventually. But "eventually" isn't a great answer for the kid who's on a screen right now.

Sources

Carrns, Ann. "Americans' Financial Knowledge Is at a 10-Year Low." The New York Times, June 12, 2026. nytimes.com

Intuit Blog Team. "40 Financial Literacy Statistics in the United States." Intuit Blog, February 26, 2026. intuit.com

Intuit Blog Team. "Money Mentorship: How Today's Parents Are Prioritizing Financial Literacy for Their Kids." Intuit Blog, March 31, 2026. intuit.com

Money and Pensions Service. "How Parents Can Teach Children About Money at Home During the Summer Holidays: Six Tips from the Money and Pensions Service." Press release, 2024. (References University of Cambridge research on financial habits forming by age 7.) maps.org.uk

Tranfaglia, Anna, Alicia Lloro, and Ellen Merry. "Question Design and the Gender Gap in Financial Literacy." FEDS Notes. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, January 2, 2024. federalreserve.gov

Yakoboski, Paul J., Annamaria Lusardi, Andrea Sticha, and Fran Mastry. "A Decade of Tracking Financial Literacy in America: Findings from the 2026 TIAA Institute–GFLEC Personal Finance Index." TIAA Institute and GFLEC, May 2026. tiaa.org