Twelve-year-old John Barreto has a wall full of awards and a drawer full of bowties.

He combined his smarts and style to win big on TV.

The seventh grader at Corpus Christi Catholic School was a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire: Whiz Kid Edition.

Barreto made quite the entrance wearing a bowtie and socks with a money pattern to the show.

“You look like $100,” show host Chris Harrison said.

Barreto has an IQ of 141. He breezed through the first questions, but needed to use a life-line for a question about DNA. He called upon his dad to help out.

"You go along for the ride and when the time came, fortunately for me, I knew the answer,” dad Ron Barreto said.

But when he got to the $30,000 question—There’s not a single United Nations member whose name begins with X or which other letter--Barreto was stumped.

He polled the audience and the majority of people picked the wrong answer.

If Barreto answered incorrectly, he would leave with only $5,000. He would leave with $20,000 if he decided to walk away.

“The risk was greater than the reward,” Barreto said. “I would have gotten $10,000 if I got it right, but I would have lost $15,000.”

Barreto chose to take the $20,000.

“I had to realize this is real money, it’s not like Monopoly,” Barreto said. “If I lose the money, ‘oh well I will make it up next week when we play.’”

It was a smart decision; his guess was the wrong answer.

"It was a big weight lifted off my shoulders because it wasn’t like did I have the right answer and not go with it,” Bareto said.

As for the money?

“I am probably going to invest a good amount of it, then the money I have left over, I might spend that, might donate some, and I want to get a free Icee day for my school,” Bareto said.