The guides
Every guide, grouped by what it is for
Seventeen long reads. Each one answers a single question completely, defines every term it uses, shows the arithmetic behind any number it quotes, and says plainly where the honest uncertainty sits.
If you are new and want the order rather than the list, start here instead. This page is the full shelf, for people who already know what they are looking for.
Foundations
The ideas everything else rests on
Read these four and most of the rest of the subject becomes readable without help.
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Foundations
Compound interest, explained without the formula
Why the same monthly amount is worth so much more when it starts earlier, shown as a table instead of an equation.
9 minute read
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Foundations
Investing for beginners, in reading order
What investing actually is, the four decisions that genuinely matter, and the many that only look like they do.
10 minute read
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Foundations
Saving and investing are two different jobs
One job keeps money available and boring. The other lets it move. Confusing them is the most expensive beginner mistake.
8 minute read
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Foundations
How inflation quietly shrinks a savings account
A balance can rise every year while buying less every year. Here is that gap written out in groceries rather than percentages.
7 minute read
Habits and planning
The unglamorous part that decides the outcome
Contributions do nearly all the work in the first decade, and contributions come from a budget, not from a market.
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Habits
How to track your spending without hating it
Three methods, from one evening with a bank export to a full month of receipts, and how to read what comes out.
7 minute read
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Habits
How to build an emergency fund from scratch
How big it should be, where to keep it, how long it takes at realistic monthly amounts, and what counts as an emergency.
8 minute read
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Habits
How to turn a vague goal into a monthly number
Every real goal has an amount, a date and a place to keep the money. Missing any of the three is why goals drift.
7 minute read
Markets
What is actually inside an investment
Shares, funds, bonds and the words attached to them. No picks, no tips, no view on what anything is worth.
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Markets
Stock market basics: what you are actually buying
A share is a slice of a company, not a lottery ticket with a moving number. Everything else follows from that sentence.
8 minute read
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Markets
Index funds and mutual funds, side by side
What the two words really describe, why they are not opposites, and why a fee difference of one point is worth arguing about.
8 minute read
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Markets
Bonds explained: what you own when you lend
A bond is a loan with a schedule. Once that is clear, the strange behaviour of bond prices stops being strange.
7 minute read
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Markets
How to read a stock chart without fooling yourself
Axes, time frames, volume and moving averages, plus the three ways an ordinary chart can mislead an honest reader.
8 minute read
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Markets
Dividend investing, and why the income is not free
Where a dividend comes from, what a yield really measures, and the capital it takes to produce a monthly income.
7 minute read
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Markets
Value and growth: two bets on the same page
Two labels that describe what an investor is paying for, not two categories of company. With the arithmetic of a price to earnings ratio.
7 minute read
Risk and building
Putting it together without breaking it
How much of a fall you can sit through, how to stop one mistake from being fatal, and what a first portfolio looks like.
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Risk
How much risk can you actually live with
Risk tolerance is not a personality quiz. It is the size of the fall you can watch without selling at the bottom.
8 minute read
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Risk
Diversification, explained with one falling holding
The only argument for spreading money that survives arithmetic, and the point past which spreading stops helping.
7 minute read
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Building
How to build a first portfolio, step by step
Choosing a split, writing it down, funding it monthly, and the one maintenance job it needs each year.
7 minute read
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Income
Passive income, with the capital written back in
Every passive income figure hides a starting amount. Here are those amounts, worked out at several honest yields.
7 minute read
Every guide here is general education. None of it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything, and every figure quoted is arithmetic worked at a stated rate rather than a forecast.