A Personal Finance Quiz (And what theFIREstarter has in common with Kim Kardashian!)
Dec10
Just a bit of fun today, with a short personal finance quiz (I could have called it a test but that sounds definitely not like fun), that got sent to me the other day by Totally Money. They got around 40 of us blogger types to have a go at it to see if we really do know our ISAs from our elbows.
Before we look at what score old muggins here got, along with where I came in the top 40 1, why don’t you have a crack at it yourself?! If you enter before midnight on the 14th December 2014 you can enter a prize draw to win an iPad 2 as well! The link to the quiz is here:
No cheating please (remember you are only cheating yourself, and you won’t have a better chance of winning the iPad with a better score as it is a random prize draw!)
The Results are in!
Now I know you’re all dying to know how I did!? No?! Well I’ll tell you anyway. I did “OK” with 11/16 which I was a little disappointed in at first… especially as this alerted me to the fact that, apparently, I am knocking around with the Kim Kardashians of the World on the personal finance knowledge front…
Kim Kardashian vs The Firestarter, an intellectual showdown to end them all!!!!
Woe betide! It took me a while to gather myself and get on with my day after that, but better news came a few days later when the full results came out, and it turned out I didn’t do so badly after all, scoring an 8th place finish, which I would have taken before attempting the quiz! Here is the final top ten table:
| Ranks | Name | Nationality | Score | Time(min) | |
|
David @ YoungAdultMoney.com | US | 15 | 03:23 | |
| 2 | Paula @ affordanything.com | US | 14 | 05:15 | |
| 3 | Adam @ MoneyBulldog.co.uk | UK | 14 | 07:56 | |
| 4 | Ryan @ themilitarywallet.com | US | 13 | 07:54 | |
| 5 | Evan @ MyJourneyToMillions.com | US | 12 | 01:55 | |
| 6 | Graham @moneystepper.co.uk | UK | 12 | 04:49 | |
| 7 | Jonny @ thefinancewand.com | US | 12 | 10:55 | |
| 8 | Andy @ thefirestarter.co.uk | UK | 11 | 03:48 | |
| 9 | Victoria @ Frugaltrial.co.uk | UK | 11 | 03:51 | |
| 10 | Brian @ Debtdiscipline.com | US | 11 | 04:10 |
Well done to David who smashed it in 3:23 and got the top score, and to Adam at Money Bulldog who won the coveted UK #1 spot. As you can see my strategy was to go for speed where possible and it looks like it half paid off, although I think I did rush a couple of the questions I got wrong that I really should have got correct.
What did I learn
As well as being a bit of fun, this was also an exercise to help us improve our knowledge, and it certainly alerts us to the subjects we might need to brush up on. In my case these areas were:
3. Building credit history – in fact I should have known this one, I put “Being on the electoral role” whereas I know that doing so is vital to getting a good credit score, so not sure why I put that as an answer!
5. Regulator of credit card industry – admittedly I had a bit of a guess on that one, I knew it had an acronym similar to FCA/FSA or something along those lines, but guessed the wrong one.
6. Level of UK household debt – I put £114 Billion. Obviously I have greater faith in the people of the nation than I should have – correct answer £1.4 trillion!!! 🙁
7. Mortgage payback calculation question – This was one I admittedly rushed. I simply can’t do this sort of question in my head but had the rough intuition that you’d end up paying roughly double what you borrowed back, which turned out to be quite spot on in the end as the answer was £866,157 (from a mortgage for £400,000). However I looked at the initial figure of house cost which was £500,000 so selected £966,157 as my answer, D’oh!
10. Which company does not hold a credit file: I put “Call Credit”, the correct answer was “EquiScore”. To be fair I have never heard of either of those, so no wonder I got that one wrong 🙂
How well did you do?! Let me know your score below, if you care to share it! Thanks!
Notes:
- I always dreamed of having an entry in the top 40 charts as a kid, but it wasn’t quite like this. Funny how things turn out eh? 🙂 ↩
- I was very wary of adding “win an iPad” to the post title due to the recent I’ve been hacked debacle… don’t want to p**s off “the big G” any further than I (inadvertently) probably have already! ↩
You scored 13 / 16 in 00:02:27.0
Failed oh the credit score company, and quick fire guesses at UK household debt and the total mortgage repayments.
Good time though Guy, well done! Sounds like similar questions to myself you got wrong.
I only got 8/16 – “Congratulations, you are one of the Lehman Brothers! You have notions of what financial literacy means, we’ll give you that, but it seems that you really don’t know what to do with your knowledge. Good effort though!”
Haha, bit disappointed but highlights the fact that I need to continue to learn about what to do with what I do know lol!
Thanks for posting the test!
Onwards and upwards weenie!
Or as MMM would say “To Achieve Greatness, You Must First Acknowledge that You Suck”
http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/07/10/to-achieve-greatness-you-must-first-acknowledge-that-you-suck/
(One of my fave ever posts from him I think)
Basically if we acknowledge where our shortcomings are, and see them as an opportunity to improve, learn and grow, rather than shy away from them and make rubbish excuses (“oh the test didn’t ask me the sort of questions you would expect on a PF quiz”, etc…) then we will become much more effective, productive and ultimately happier people 🙂
I’m Kim K too 🙂 I got 12/16 cuz I kept rushing and paying attention to the time too – dang it! Half the ones I got wrong I KNEW but misread the words…. So I’d probably be tied for 3rd up there if I spent double the time to read…
This was fun 🙂
Heh, glad you enjoyed it J
It’s a lot tougher when the pressure of the timer is there isn’t it? 🙂
There are worse things in the world than to be like Kim Kardashian. For example, you can wear the hell out of yoga pants or pencil skirts now.
Well I’m not sure my a$$ will look as good(!?) in them but it’s certainly a new avenue to explore… haha!
11 in 2 mintues flat. should have taken my time as got a silly couple wrong, but got things to do!
All of us supposed long term “tortoise” style investors going for the “Hare” approach to doing quizzes… I don’t know, whatever next eh!?
I’m waiting for someone to ask if you’re going to do a photo-shoot with your arse hanging out so you can have something else in common with Kim Kardashian!
That wouldn’t just break the internet, it would break most peoples laptop screens! hah! 🙂