Understand your own money
Three explainers, in order, covering the systems that decide what you can borrow, what it costs, and what you retire on.
Anyone about to take on a mortgage, or wondering why their credit application was priced the way it was.
These three systems are usually explained separately, which hides the thing that connects them: they are all about the price of money over time. Read in this order, each one makes the next easier.
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01
How Credit Scores Work
Start here. Your credit score is the input to almost every other financial system you will meet, and it is the one you have the most direct control over.
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02
How Mortgages Work
Now that you know what determines the rate you are offered, this is what that rate actually does to your money over twenty-five years.
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03
What is a Pension and How Does It Work?
The same compounding that makes mortgage interest painful makes pension contributions powerful. Same mechanism, opposite direction.