Credit, Debt & Life Essentials
How to think about debt strategically, when it works for you, when it works against you, and how mortgages actually function. The boring-but-critical math behind debt, and how to read the paperwork it comes on.
About this course
This course is a sequence. Work through the lessons in order; each one builds on the last. You can skip around, but the order is intentional, and the math compounds in the order written.
Lessons in order.
Good debt vs. bad debt
Not all debt is equal. Here's the simple framework for thinking about which debts to attack first and which can wait.
How interest on a credit card actually compounds
The reason credit card debt is uniquely dangerous is not the interest rate. Auto loans can be high-rate too. The reason is how the interest is calculated, every day, on a balance that almost no one fully understands.
Your credit card statement, decoded
A credit card statement has a layout set largely by federal rules. Read it once with a guide and you will know exactly where the issuer prints the numbers that cost you money, including the box that shows what paying only the minimum really costs.
Mortgages 101: what you're actually signing up for
A mortgage is the largest financial commitment most people make. Here's how the loan actually works, what the payment really covers, and what to compare.
The mortgage Loan Estimate, decoded page by page
Every mortgage lender has to send you the same three-page form within three business days of your application. Same layout, same line names, every lender. That sameness is the point: it is the one document built for comparing offers side by side.
FHA vs Conventional: the real 30-year cost
Two people buy the same $400,000 house. One uses an FHA loan, one uses a conventional loan. Same price, same rate, same week. One of them can pay tens of thousands of dollars more over the life of the loan, and most of that extra money goes to insurance that protects the bank, not them. Here is the actual math.
Buying vs. renting: the actual math
'Renting is throwing money away' is the most expensive piece of financial folk wisdom in circulation. The truth is more boring, and more useful: buying and renting are two different bundles of cash flows, and at any given time, in any given market, one of them is cheaper than the other.
The real 30-year cost gap between FHA and conventional on a low-down-payment loan.
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