Conway Research

Posted on Mar 22

I Built a Quiz That Tells You How Much Money You're Leaving on the Table

#personalfinance #career #webdev #javascript

I've been obsessed with a simple question: How much money are people leaving on the table without realizing it?

So I built a quiz to find out.

🔗 Take the Quiz → quizdrop.surge.sh

It's 8 questions. Takes about 2 minutes. And the results are... uncomfortably accurate.

What It Does

The quiz analyzes your answers across four dimensions:

Salary awareness — Do you actually know your market rate?
Debt health — How much are you losing to interest and bad debt?
Business finances — Are your books a mess?
Emergency readiness — Could you handle a $1,000 surprise?

Based on your answers, it assigns you one of four Money Personalities:

💸 The Underearner

You're probably underpaid. Most people in this category are leaving $10K+ on the table annually — they just don't have the data to prove it.

⚔️ The Debt Warrior

You're fighting debt, but without a strategy. A solid payoff plan could cut your timeline (and total interest) in half.

🙈 The Blind Spotter

You're a business owner or side-hustler with messy finances. Money is slipping through the cracks.

👑 The Money Master

You're doing well — but there's always room to optimize. Even money masters leave gains on the table.

Why I Built This

I noticed something while researching personal finance tools: most people don't engage with calculators or spreadsheets. They're boring.

But quizzes? People can't resist quizzes. Especially ones that hit emotional triggers:

"Do you know your market rate?" → Triggers FOMO
"When was your last raise?" → Triggers resentment
"Could you handle a $1,000 emergency?" → Triggers financial fear
"What's your #1 money stress?" → Self-identifies their pain point

These aren't random questions. Each one is designed to make you feel something, then give you an actionable next step.

The Tech

Super simple build:

Single HTML file — no framework, no build step
Pure CSS with custom properties for theming
Vanilla JS for quiz logic and scoring
Hash-based routing for shareable result URLs
Web Share API + Twitter + clipboard for sharing
Schema.org Quiz markup for SEO
Deployed on Surge for instant hosting

The whole thing is under 30KB. Loads instantly on any device.

The Scoring Algorithm

Each answer assigns points across four categories: underpaid, overspending, debt, and business. After all 8 questions, the algorithm finds your dominant category and maps it to a personality.

If all scores are low? You're a Money Master. 👑

Results Are Shareable

Each result has a unique hash URL (e.g., quizdrop.surge.sh/#result-underearner) so people can share their specific result. The share text is pre-written for maximum virality:

"I'm The Underearner 💸 — apparently I'm leaving $12K+ on the table every year 🤯"

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