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· 13 min read
An advertised $32,000 car leaves the lot at $36,399 before any trade-in — $2,324 of sales tax, $500 of doc fee, $375 of title and registration and $1,200 of add-ons. Strip the add-ons and the irreducible gap is $3,115, or 9.73 percent of the sticker.
· 12 min read
A twelve-year-old roof that costs $20,000 to replace is worth $10,400 on a straight-line schedule. After a $2,000 deductible, an actual cash value policy pays $8,400 and a replacement cost policy pays $18,000 — same roof, same loss, $9,600 apart.
· 8 min read
A $3.30 plate on a $12.00 menu is 27.5 percent. An extra 30 grams of chicken and 6 percent waste push it to 31.65 percent — while a 5 percent supplier increase moves it only 1.38 points.
· 7 min read
Walked down one $10M P&L: EBITDA of $1.8M, EBIT of $1.1M, net income of $525K. The gap is 70.8 percent of EBITDA — and it is the cost of the assets and the debt the business actually runs on.
· 4 min read
Three fair ways to split rent — equally, by room size, or by income — with worked examples so nobody feels shortchanged.
· 8 min read
Everyone quotes 3:1 and nobody states their churn assumption. With $100 ARPU and an 80 percent gross margin, moving monthly churn from 2 to 3 percent drops the ratio from 4.0:1 to 2.67:1 — a pass turned into a fail by one percentage point.
· 8 min read
Growth rate plus profit margin should clear 40. But 60 percent growth at a minus 20 percent margin scores the same as 10 percent growth at a 30 percent margin — and on $10M of revenue those are opposite companies.
· 15 min read
Qualified expenses, the K-12 cap and state tax treatment are three separate rules, and only the first two are federal. The K-12 cap doubled to 20,000 dollars for tax years from 2026; a federally qualified withdrawal can still be a state recapture event.
· 4 min read
Compare fixed and variable rate mortgages on certainty, cost, and risk, and see which suits your budget, timeline, and tolerance for change.
· 6 min read
At 7 percent nominal and 3 percent inflation the real return is 3.883 percent, not 4. The Fisher equation divides, it does not subtract — and over 30 years the shortcut overstates a $10,000 pot by $1,072.
· 6 min read
Settling a $20,000 car loan at 7 percent two years in saves $1,431 of interest — but only $663 of that is a real gain if the cash was earning 4 percent, and precomputed interest can take $62 or more off the top.
· 6 min read
Standard, extended, overpaid, refinanced or income-linked: the same $30,000 at 5 percent costs anywhere from $35,716 to $52,613. And where a scheme writes the balance off, overpaying can cost $11,178 and buy nothing.
· 6 min read
A 6 percent loan with a 3 percent fee and compulsory insurance carries an APR of 10.7 percent and costs $486 more than a 7.5 percent loan with no fees at all. The APR is the figure that catches it.
· 6 min read
A 1:3 ratio does not make you right more often — it lets you be wrong three times out of four and still break even. Here is the inversion, a table of ratio against required win rate, and what costs do to both.
· 4 min read
Learn why a loan costs far more than the amount borrowed, how total interest builds over the term, and why a longer term means paying more.
· 7 min read
Market cap is price times circulating supply — an arithmetic product, not money invested. Volume is what actually changed hands. Here is what each measures, how their ratio exposes a thin market, and where fully diluted valuation fits.
· 6 min read
An advertised 8 percent becomes 8.33 percent once daily rewards compound — and then 7.46 percent after a 10 percent validator commission, and less again after unbonding time. Here is each step, with the arithmetic laid out.
· 4 min read
Understand the 33% to 43% debt-to-income limits lenders use, how they calculate the ratio, and what to do if yours is too high.
· 8 min read
The famous transaction fee is one of five layers. On a $40 item with $6 shipping, Etsy's order fees come to $4.62 — and $11.52 if the sale came through Offsite Ads.
· 6 min read
Impermanent loss is not a fee and it is not temporary: it is the gap between your liquidity position and simply having held the two tokens. Here is the formula, a table of price change against loss, and the fee income you would need to come out ahead.
· 12 min read
Split $50,000 into five rungs instead of one five-year deposit and you end year five with $61,573.20 instead of $61,715.12. The whole liquidity option costs $141.92, once, during the ramp — and it is worth $1,049.24 if rates rise a point.
· 4 min read
See how overpaying a mortgage cuts total interest and shortens the term, and when investing the same money might beat paying the loan down faster.
· 15 min read
Sell at $700,000 with a $300,000 basis and the gain is $400,000. Buy back at $640,000 and the $60,000 you kept is boot — taxed now, at 25 percent, because it is depreciation coming home. The 45 and 180 days start on the same day; they do not run one after the other.
· 8 min read
eBay charges its final value fee on the item plus the postage the buyer paid. A 13.6 percent rate on a $100 item with $10 shipping costs $15.36 — 15.4 percent of the price you actually set.