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The work

Every article, one index.

Plain-English finance education across eight pillars. Search by topic or term — or scroll, newest first.

8 articles, newest first
Life playbooks

Life Playbooks — The Real Money Math Behind Buying a Home, Switching Countries, and Having Kids

The honest spreadsheet for three six-figure life decisions — buying a home, switching countries, and having kids — with real numbers, not designer briefs.

·28 min read
Tools

Honest Calculators — The Real Numbers Every Other Tool Quietly Hides

Most calculators are sales tools. Six honest ones — APR, fee drag, true mortgage cost, real return — that do the math the others quietly leave out, with worked dollar examples and the gap named in every case.

·19 min read
Diaries

Money Diaries — Real Budgets, Real Mistakes, Real Recoveries

Six composite financial autopsies — invisible family obligations, sudden wealth, the 4× couple gap, an evaporating inheritance, two decades of remittances, sine-wave income — with the structural lessons standard advice avoids.

·38 min read
The decoder

The Money Document Decoder: 12 Confusing Papers in Your Life, Translated Line by Line

From your paystub to a 'free trial' terms page — twelve documents you sign or receive every year, decoded line by line, with the catch named for each.

·3 min read
Scams

Scams Are a Product. Here's the Spec Sheet.

Most scam articles are a list of '10 scams to avoid.' This is the spec sheet of the industry behind them — the five-stage funnel, the targeting matrix, the universal tells, and what to do if it just happened to you.

·23 min read
Dictionary guides

The Money Translator — A Plain-English Dictionary of the Words Finance Hides Behind

Most finance dictionaries tell you what a word means and stop. This one tells you what each word DOES — hides a cost, manufactures authority, creates lock-in. Twenty-four terms across six categories of trick.

·15 min read
Make money

Your 401(k) default is probably not the best 401(k) you could have

A 401(k) is a tax wrapper, not an investment. The fund inside the wrapper does the work — and the auto-enrolled default fund is rarely the best one available in the same plan.

·4 min read
Money traps

How credit-card minimum payments quietly cost you thousands

The minimum payment is calibrated by the lender, not by you. Here's what it actually costs to use it as your payment plan — and why the warning box on your statement is the most ignored piece of consumer-protection text in the country.

·4 min read