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Big decisionsRent or buy? Finding your break-even year
Rent is not throwing money away, and neither is mortgage interest. Compare the unrecoverable costs of each and find the year buying starts to pay off.
Read the storyPersonal finance, worked out
Clear numbers for ordinary money decisions
Budgets, buffers, debt and fees, explained with worked examples in round numbers. Written for people with a salary, a side business, or both.
Latest from the ledger
Freelance money
Building a tax buffer when nobody withholds for you
When you freelance, every payment arrives before tax. A simple percentage rule, a separate account and a quarterly check stop the annual tax bill from becoming a crisis.
Big decisions
Five insurance myths, and the one rule that sorts them out
Insure what you cannot afford to lose, self-insure the rest. Five common beliefs about cover tested against that rule, with deductible maths.
Money systems
The one-hour monthly money routine (and why daily tracking fails)
Automate the transfers, then review once a month. A step-by-step routine with a sample payday schedule for a single salary of $4,600 net.
Pay and income
How to read a pay slip, line by line
Gross pay, pre-tax deductions, withholding and the year-to-date column. A walk through a sample pay slip and the five things worth checking every month.
Budgeting
Sinking funds: how to stop being surprised by bills you knew were coming
Car services, birthdays and annual renewals are not emergencies. A simple sinking-fund system turns them into a single predictable monthly transfer.
Debt and borrowing
Avalanche or snowball? One household's debts, run both ways
We ran a fictional couple's three debts through both payoff methods, month by month. The gap was smaller than the online arguments suggest.