How I Studied for the Personal Finance DSST Exam
I took the Personal Finance DSST exam today and passed with a 441 out of 500. Passing score is 400, so I got three college credits.Below are the exam details as found on the DSST fact sheet.This exam was developed to enable schools to award credit to students for knowledge equivalent to thatlearned by students taking the course. This exam tests the ability to understand credit and debt; majorpurchases; taxes; insurance; investments; and retirement and estate planning.The exam contains 100 questions to be answered in 2 hours.EXAM CONTENT OUTLINEThe following is an outline of the content areas covered in the examination. The approximatepercentage of the examination devoted to each content area is also noted.
Foundations of Business – 10%
Financial goals, and values
Budgeting and financial statements
Cash Management
Economic terminology
Institutional aspects of financial planning
Credit and Debt – 15%
Credit and debit cards
Installment loans
Interest calculations
Federal credit laws
Creditworthiness, credit scoring and reporting
Bankruptcy
Major Purchases – 15%
Auto, furniture, appliances
Housing
Taxes – 15%
Payroll
Income
IRS and audits
Estate and gift
Tax planning/estimating
Progressive vs regressive
Other (excise, property, sales, gas)
Tax Professionals
Insurance – 15%
Risk management
Life policies
Property and liability policies
Health, disability and long-term care policies
Specialty insurance (e.g. professional, malpractice, antiques)
Insurance analysis and sources of information
Investments – 15%
Liquid Assets
Bonds
Equities
Mutual funds and exchange traded funds
Other (e.g. commodities, precious metals, real estate, derivatives)
Sources of information
Time value of money
Asset/portfolio allocation
Retirement and Estate Planning – 15%
Terminology (vesting, maturity, rollovers)
Qualified retirement accounts (e.g IRA, Roth, IRA, SEP, Keogh, 401(k), 403(b))
Social Security benefits
Wills, trusts and estate planning
Tax-deferred annuities
http://getcollegecredit.com/assets/pdf/dsst_fact_sheets/DSST_Personal_Finance_2016.pdfAfter the exam, I decided to look up how DSST exams are scored. The scoring scale ranges from 200 to 500 and is criterion-referenced standard setting. This means that regardless of how well other test takers of the same exam do, my score is not affected.http://getcollegecredit.com/assets/pdf/DSST_Exam_Scoring_FEB2016.pdfI already knew a lot of the information that I needed to study for this exam. I teach personal finance... I should know it.There was knowledge that I learned in microeconomics and macroeconomics that helped me understand some concepts that were covered on this exam, as some concepts overlapped. Some concepts are GDP, business cycles, recession, unemployment, supply and demand, US fiscal policy, and US monetary policy.And I know I complain about MLM, but I've been to enough financial service MLM presentations where the recruiter tried to sell himself as a financial planner/life insurance sales agent, that I could answer the questions on insurance just fine. At least I got something out of attending these sales presentations.I learned about retirement planning from Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University and also from the work experience I had working at Bay Ridge Financial Group.http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu/I read this Wikipedia article on debthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DebtAnd then I read this Wikipedia article on credithttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_(finance)After that, I read this guide written by Michael Jay on how to buy a house. The link includes only a summary of the whole process, but I read (skimmed) through all 21 steps. I never bought a house before—neither did my parents—so the entire process was mysterious to me. If you bought a house before, then this website serves as a refresher for you.http://michaelbluejay.com/house/basics.htmlTaxes were also mysterious to me and my experience of taxes is probably similar to many people in their 20s. My parents help me file my taxes, so the whole subject is perplexing to me. If you file your own taxes and understand what form is used for what, then this part of the exam will be easy for you. I studied taxes by watching youtube videos, which actually explained the subject very clearly.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyDsCulyZS8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujdN7uK5kDkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGyEF5zTxJYI used InstantCert to make sure that I would get used to answering personal finance questions. The questions are fill in the blank, which exercise the brain more actively than multiple choice.http://www.instantcert.com/And then the last resource I used before taking this exam was Quizlet. Quizlet offers a 333 question multiple choice exam and it covers every area you need to know. I took it once and got a 99% and used that as an indicator that I was ready to take the official exam.https://quizlet.com/68156475/test?mult_choice=on&prompt-with=1&limit=333There was an awful lot of questions on insurance and underwriting on the exam.During the exam, I had some difficulty with taxes, auditing, and time-value of money questions.The videos I watched to learn about taxes were helpful, but not a single question was about which tax form/code is for what. More useful to know are the different kinds of taxes that exist (federal income, social security, medicare, sales, excise, property, estate, etc.)I didn't study auditing at all. I recommend briefly reading a Wikipedia article on it. It's helpful to know anyway in case one day the IRS decides to pick on you for an audit.I didn't know much about time-value of money. During the test, I assumed it was about the decline in purchasing power of your money as time passes. There were 2-3 questions on this. Not that important, but you should read about it anyway.
