Risk tolerance plays an important part in your overall plan for investing your money. But how many high schoolers know what risk tolerance is, much less their own level of tolerance? Let’s fix that!
What is this risk tolerance quiz all about?
We designed this financial risk tolerance quiz specifically with high schoolers in mind. We used high-interest questions like:
- When you go to an amusement park, what do you like to ride?
- You have just won the semi-final round in a chess tournament. You can quit and walk away with a $200 prize or keep playing for a chance at $400 in the final round. What do you do?
- You have saved up $500 to go on the overnight junior class trip a few hours from home. However, you know you have a big senior trip coming up next year, and you will need some money for that trip too. What do you do?
Your students’ answers will reveal if they have an aggressive, moderate, or low risk tolerance. Then they’ll use their results to do a follow-up activity where they have to decide how to invest $500.
How do I teach this lesson?
- Introduce the idea of risk tolerance as how comfortable you are with the ups and downs of the stock market.
- Have your students take our risk tolerance quiz. (You can get it in Spanish too.) They should note their results (aggressive, moderate, or low).
- Give them a copy of the worksheet. (Get it in Spanish.) Invite them to consider how they would invest $500 based on their own risk tolerance. They’ll read the examples and then do some percentage calculations to complete a table and pie chart. Students can refer to the glossary for any unfamiliar terms (or you can pre-teach them!).
- Have a discussion about what they learned about themselves and why they made the investment decisions they did.
