Money & Finance Vocabulary Quiz
How well do you know the language of money? Test your knowledge of banking, budgeting, investments, loans, and everyday financial terms across 20 multiple-choice questions at B1–B2 level.
Start the Quiz →What This Quiz Covers
Money and finance vocabulary is among the most practically useful word sets for intermediate learners of English. Whether you are reading the news, managing a bank account abroad, studying for IELTS or Cambridge B2 First, or working in an international environment, you will encounter this language constantly. This quiz tests the core financial vocabulary that appears at B1 and B2 level — the terms learners most often confuse, misuse, or simply never encounter in general coursebooks.
The 20 multiple-choice questions are organised around the key areas of personal and professional finance: banking services and accounts (current account, savings account, overdraft, standing order, direct debit), borrowing and lending (loan, mortgage, interest rate, collateral, instalment), managing money (budget, expenditure, income, net pay, gross pay), and investing (shares, dividends, portfolio, return on investment, asset). Each question places vocabulary in a realistic sentence or short dialogue so that meaning is always anchored in context.
Common confusion pairs such as lend/borrow, debt/deficit, salary/wage, and revenue/profit feature prominently because these are the distinctions that even high-level learners get wrong. Mastering them will strengthen both your productive and receptive vocabulary at B2 level and above.
What You Will Learn
- Core banking vocabulary: current account, savings account, overdraft, standing order, direct debit, statement, and online banking terms.
- Borrowing and credit: loan, mortgage, interest rate, APR, instalment, collateral, guarantor, and the difference between secured and unsecured debt.
- Earning and income: distinctions between salary, wage, earnings, gross pay, net pay, take-home pay, and dividend.
- Budgeting and expenditure: budget, expenditure, expense, overhead, cash flow, deficit, and the language of cutting costs.
- Investment vocabulary: shares, stocks, portfolio, asset, liability, return on investment (ROI), and basic terms from the stock market.
- Common confusable pairs: lend vs borrow, revenue vs profit, debt vs deficit, price vs cost vs charge.
- Financial transactions: transfer, withdrawal, deposit, exchange rate, commission, fee, and currency-related vocabulary.
- Business finance basics: invoice, receipt, turnover, break even, subsidy, tax — terms useful for workplace English at B2 level.
How to Prepare
Before you start, it helps to review the most productive confusable pairs. Remember that lend means to give money temporarily (Can you lend me £10?) while borrow means to receive it temporarily (Can I borrow £10?). Similarly, revenue is the total money a business brings in, while profit is what remains after costs are deducted. Debt refers to money owed, while deficit refers to a shortfall between income and expenditure.
You can build this vocabulary in context using the Flash Cards exercise — create a set focused on financial word families — or try the Complete the Sentence exercise, which lets you practise collocations such as open an account, take out a loan, pay off a mortgage, and invest in shares before tackling the timed quiz.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Lend means to give something temporarily to someone else: The bank lent us the money. Borrow means to receive something temporarily from someone else: We borrowed the money from the bank. The key is the direction of transfer — the lender gives, the borrower takes. A common error is saying Can you borrow me some money? when the correct form is Can you lend me some money? or Can I borrow some money from you?
A salary is a fixed annual amount paid to an employee, typically in equal monthly instalments regardless of hours worked — most commonly used for office or professional roles. A wage is pay calculated per hour or per day and typically associated with manual, trade, or hourly work. Both refer to earnings from employment, but the distinction matters in formal and workplace English: you would say a teacher’s salary but a builder’s daily wage. Pay and earnings work as neutral alternatives for both.
Gross pay (also called gross salary) is the total amount earned before any deductions — tax, National Insurance contributions, pension contributions, and other withholdings. Net pay (also called take-home pay or net salary) is what you actually receive in your bank account after all deductions have been made. When discussing your earnings in English, it is important to specify which figure you mean: My gross salary is £40,000 but my net pay is around £2,600 a month.
An overdraft is a facility that allows a bank account holder to spend more money than they have in their account, up to an agreed limit. When your balance goes below zero you are said to be overdrawn or in your overdraft. Banks typically charge interest or a fee for using an overdraft. Common collocations include: arrange an overdraft, go into your overdraft, exceed your overdraft limit, an authorised/unauthorised overdraft. It differs from a loan because it is a flexible, short-term facility attached to a current account rather than a fixed sum borrowed for a set period.
Revenue (also called turnover or income in a business context) is the total amount of money a company brings in from its sales or services before any costs are subtracted. Profit is what remains after all costs (wages, rent, materials, taxes, etc.) have been deducted from revenue. Gross profit deducts only the direct costs of producing goods or services, while net profit deducts all expenses. A business can have high revenue but low or negative profit if its costs are very high.
A mortgage is a specific type of secured loan used to purchase property. The property itself acts as collateral — meaning the lender (usually a bank or building society) can repossess it if the borrower fails to repay. Mortgages typically run for 25–35 years and involve monthly repayments of both capital (the original amount borrowed) and interest. A general loan can be for any purpose and may be secured or unsecured. Key collocations: take out a mortgage, pay off a mortgage, fixed-rate mortgage, variable-rate mortgage, remortgage, deposit, repayment.
Debt refers to money that is owed — by a person, company, or government — as the result of borrowing. You can have debt, be in debt, pay off a debt, or run up debts. Deficit refers to a shortfall between income and expenditure in a given period — when you spend more than you earn. A government can have both an annual budget deficit (spending more than it receives in a year) and a national debt (the accumulated total of past borrowing). The two concepts are related but distinct: deficit is a flow (ongoing), while debt is a stock (accumulated).
The interest rate is the percentage charged by a lender on the amount borrowed, or paid by a bank on savings, expressed as an annual percentage. APR stands for Annual Percentage Rate and is a broader measure that includes not only the interest rate but also additional charges and fees, giving a more accurate picture of the true cost of borrowing. When comparing credit cards, loans, or mortgages, the APR is the most useful figure. A low headline interest rate may hide high fees, making the APR significantly higher than the stated rate.
The core investment vocabulary at B2 level includes: shares (also called stocks in American English) — units of ownership in a company; dividends — payments made to shareholders from company profits; portfolio — the collection of investments held by an individual or institution; asset — anything of value owned; liability — money owed; return on investment (ROI) — the profit made relative to the amount invested; diversify — to spread investments across different assets to reduce risk; and risk appetite — the level of risk an investor is willing to accept.
Money and finance is one of the most frequently tested topic areas across all four skills in IELTS and Cambridge B2 First (FCE). In IELTS Academic Reading and Listening, texts about economics, banking regulation, personal finance, and global trade are common. IELTS Writing Task 2 often presents prompts about income inequality, tax policy, or consumer spending. In B2 First, financial vocabulary appears in Use of English word formation and open cloze tasks. Knowing precise collocations (raise interest rates, take out a loan, go into debt) is particularly rewarded in the Writing and Speaking components.