Updated: 10/27/2011 12:14 PM ET| 9 money rules to live by
Americans young and old are flunking their finances, but money
mastery isn't really that hard. Here are 9 simple keys you need
to know. Most surveys that measure financial literacy focus on
teenagers, and the results are always grim. In research by the
nonprofit Jump$tart Coalition, which promotes personal finance
education, the average high school student correctly answered
just 48.3% of the questions covering money basics in 2008. That
was down from 57.3% a decade earlier, but even that score was
hardly distinguishing -- anything less than 60% counts as an F.
A 2005 poll by Harris Interactive for the National Council on
Economic Education showed that adults aren't that much savvier.
While teens on average scored a 53 (another F) on a quiz testing
knowledge of basic economic and personal-finance concepts, the
grownups' average score was just 70 (a C). - More than one-
quarter of adults failed the quiz. - Women were far more likely
to fail than men; 42%